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Topic: Legni - Tr. sord. (Read 12386 times) previous topic - next topic

Legni - Tr. sord.

Does anybody what "Legni - Tr. sord." means ?

Something to do with wood instruments ???

Re: Legni - Tr. sord.

Reply #1 –
I didn't know Legni so I looked it up.  It means "woodwinds" in Italian.  "Sord." almost definitely is short for "Sordino,"  which in music means "muted."  The "tr." could stand for 'tromba' which is 'trumpet,' but the fact that it directly follows 'legni' makes me doubt it.  Perhaps it means that this passage of music should be played by all the woodwinds and a muted trumpet (?).

Re: Legni - Tr. sord.

Reply #2 –
I think that woodwind AND trumpet should keep quiet. It depends on the score - do some instruments share the same staff, so do they play exactly the same notes? And at this point (a quieter passage) only one of the instruments plays this staff?

Re: Legni - Tr. sord.

Reply #3 –
On second thought ....
Nagging doubts prompted me to find out what else 'tr.' could stand for.  According to my source, 'tr.' can mean 'double trill.'  Furthermore:
before about 1680 the Italian word trillo indicated accelerating pulsations of breath on a single note rather than the 'shake' or trill we find used from the Baroque period onward.
So 'legni - tr. sord.' could mean that the woodwinds should play a muted double trill.

Re: Legni - Tr. sord.

Reply #4 –
Sounds VERY plausible!
As Jeeves and/or Wooster would have said: Rem acu tetigisti!

Re: Legni - Tr. sord.

Reply #5 –
What's a "double trill?"

Re: Legni - Tr. sord.

Reply #6 –
I had never heard of it either, but according to www.dolmetsch.com, it's a trill between two notes more than a tone apart.

Re: Legni - Tr. sord.

Reply #7 –
Thanks.  I guess the closest I've seen to that is tr#~~~.

Re: Legni - Tr. sord.

Reply #8 –
This intrigued me, I really should not have ben here, and perhaps you, Rob, will wonder why I am.

An earlier comment is helpful. What instrument is playing to respond to the command? Who was the composer? When was the work written?

In a 20th century context and in the absence of any other context I would read it as:

Strings - put your mutes on and play tremelo with the wood not the hair of your bows!

But in an earlier century I would be inclined to agree with Rob. This is a passage for muted brass and woodwind (not muted as mutes are ineffectual on instrments with more than one exit).

Re: Legni - Tr. sord.

Reply #9 –
Stuart,
It means that you are away, on a well deserved holiday, and/or still convalescing? And you have no access to the Newsgroup there. (so I was left to do all the correcting work by myself) But the Forum is still accessible.
Good guess?
Rob.

Re: Legni - Tr. sord.

Reply #10 –
An example of a double trill would be E and C trilling to/between F and D, on an instrument which is capable of playing two (or more) tones simultaneously.