Legato, Staccato, and Accent: How Much Do the Marks Actually Determine?

Building a Piano Piece · Season Three: From Score to Interpretation: Building a Performance of Your Own · Article Four

“Staccato means half the written value.” “Legato means that the notes join completely.” “An accent means louder.” Such definitions give a beginner an immediate contrast, but they cannot govern real repertoire. A dot over a quaver does not produce the same millisecond duration in an adagio, a rapid scherzo, a Classical dance and a Romantic melody. A long slur may organise a phrase or specify articulation within less than a full phrase. An accent can be heard through keystroke energy, timing, voicing, duration or the relative weakness of what comes before.

Marks establish relationships and a field of intention; they do not contain the completed sound. The performer must realise them through interacting dimensions: onset, duration, overlap or gap, release, loudness and voicing. Pedal may continue a sound after the finger has left the key.

Establish which textual layer contains the mark

Before interpreting articulation, inspect the edition. Slurs, dots, wedges and pedal may derive from composer-related sources or from an editor’s practical additions. The value of a critical edition is not simply a clean page. Its report explains where sources agree and conflict. The editorial guidelines of the C. P. E. Bach complete edition explicitly treat articulation, slurs, dynamics and ornaments as textual elements whose variants may need reporting. An Urtext is thus an evidence-based editorial argument, not a transparent reproduction of a manuscript.

After provenance comes usage. What does this mark tend to do for this composer, period and genre? The keyboard treatises of C. P. E. Bach and Türk are important evidence for eighteenth-century practice. They do not directly regulate Chopin, Debussy or twentieth-century notation. Historical evidence narrows a field while retaining its boundaries.

Why a fixed duration ratio is insufficient

The instruction to make staccato half the notated value omits at least three variables. Actual duration changes with tempo: one-half at a slow rate may produce an enormous hole, while one-half at high speed may scarcely register as separation. Register and room resonance change perceived detachment. Finally, relations between events matter more than one note’s isolated length. Notes can be short under the fingers yet connected by pedal; they can occupy much of their value yet sound discontinuous because their onsets and weight separate them.

Research on pianistic timing, articulation, dynamics and pedal treats these as joint contributors to expressive sound and reports that overlap varies with rate, register and musical context. Such evidence does not provide a universal percentage for a dot. It explains why any physical percentage must be tested as a heard relationship.

Build an articulation matrix

For a short passage, make five columns:

1. Onset: clear, gentle, weighted or lightly touched?
2. Duration: how much of the notated value, relative to tempo and style rather than a fixed formula?
3. Overlap or gap: do adjacent sounds connect, slightly overlap, or leave an audible interval?
4. Release: immediate, graduated, or transferred to pedal resonance?
5. Hierarchy: do melody, accompaniment and bass require different articulations?

The matrix prevents a dot from meaning only “shorter”. A buoyant staccato may have a quick but non-aggressive onset, clear gaps, low weight and little pedal. An emphatic staccato may be equally short yet weightier. Duration alone cannot distinguish them.

Legato, similarly, does not mean maximising overlap between every note. Finger legato, pedal legato and perceptual legato are different resources. A melodic voice can remain connected while pedal clears at harmonic changes. Across chords or leaps that cannot be joined by fingers, selective pedal and directed voicing can create perceived continuity. Excessive overlap, by contrast, may obscure supporting parts and delay harmonic clarity.

An accent is not simply “more decibels”

First determine the accent’s function. Is it metrical gravity, syncopated tension, harmonic friction, a voice entry, or an articulation instruction? If every accent is realised through a sudden increase in keystroke velocity, a line develops holes and harmonic hierarchy becomes flat.

Make four versions. In the first, alter only loudness. In the second, preserve a small amount of time before the accented event. In the third, give it fuller duration or support without making it markedly louder. In the fourth, reduce the preceding sound so the target becomes relatively prominent. Blind-listen for the option that serves the context. Timing must be especially sparing: pausing at every accent destroys pulse.

Within a chord, distinguish “the chord is accented” from “this voice has an accent”. If the mark belongs to a melodic entry, making the entire chord louder can cause bass and filling notes to mask the target. Practise the target alone, then restore other notes at audible but non-competing levels.

Interpret combinations, not symbols one at a time

Dots beneath a slur, accented staccato, short slurs and phrase boundaries require combined interpretation. Staccato under a slur often indicates separation within a shared gesture or semantic unit; it need not sound like the same dots without the slur. Wedges, tenuto lines, dots and ordinary accents can also have composer- and edition-specific histories. A modern symbol chart cannot replace source study.

Use this procedure. Hide editorial fingering and old personal markings. Make a neutral version based only on the text whose status you can establish. Consult a critical report and relevant period evidence. Then make two audibly distinct, defensible solutions. Return each to the full phrase, because an isolated note’s apparently correct length may fail entirely in context.

Why the same solution cannot be transferred unchanged to every piano

The goal of articulation is a heard relation, while its physical realisation depends on decay, key feedback and room response. In a resonant room, a staccato released clearly by the finger may still merge perceptually. On a dry instrument, the same gap can fracture the sentence. The first task after changing pianos is not to defend former milliseconds. Play neighbouring legato, non-legato and staccato examples, listen from an audience position, and recalibrate release and pedal. Altering physical means to preserve the textual relationship is not infidelity to the mark; it is how the mark remains effective.

Movement must also serve sound. Raising the arm conspicuously to produce every staccato, or maintaining stiffness to “hold” an accent, can impose needless load. Pain, numbness or persistent discomfort is no longer an ordinary interpretive option: stop the relevant movement and seek appropriate pedagogical or healthcare guidance.

Three tests

The contrast test asks whether adjacent legato and staccato can be distinguished without seeing the page while still belonging to the same sonic world. The hierarchy test asks whether leading and accompanying parts have purposeful articulation roles, rather than every note receiving one touch. The transfer test asks whether the pianist can adjust physical duration and pedal on a drier or more resonant piano while preserving the relationship.

Record from a normal listening distance, not only from immediately above the keys. Close sound reveals finger release, but an audience position receives resonance and room response. The final object of judgement is the articulation relation that reaches the listener.

Articulation marks genuinely constrain performance, yet they do not specify every physical variable. Fidelity does not consist in attaching a constant movement to each symbol. It consists in preserving the symbol’s audible relationship within the particular work.

Notation tells a performer which sounds must be placed in relationship. The performer remains responsible for how that relationship becomes audible on this instrument, at this tempo and in this room.

Primary sources and further reading

• Editorial guidelines of the C. P. E. Bach complete edition
• Critical edition and translation of C. P. E. Bach’s Essay
• Historical source for Daniel Gottlob Türk’s Klavierschule
• Timing, articulation, dynamics, pedal and timbral individuality in piano performance
• Effects of tempo on piano movement and keystroke velocity

Continue reading: Building a Piano Piece series page

If you would like to bring these ideas about listening, understanding, and practice to the keyboard, you might try ScoreFlow, an app I developed to make score reading and daily practice flow more naturally together.