Franz Schubert(Source: Wikimedia.org, Licence: PD)
Anyone working with Schubert’s autographs inevitably runs up sooner or later against the famous accent question: that is, more precisely, the question of whether the sign notated at this or that passage means an accent or a decrescendo hairpin. Although both signs in modern music notation are very clearly distinguished one from the other – an accent is placed directly above the note head, the hairpin below or above the stave –, they are closely related in origin. When in the expiring 18th century the signs for getting louder or softer (crescendo and decrescendo hairpins) arose as alternatives or substitutes for the written-out directives crescendo and decrescendo, the > sign evolved as an abbreviated decrescendo hairpin. The correlation becomes graphic for instance in Beethoven’s songs. Continue reading
