In music, to articulate (from the Latin articulō, meaning I enunciate clearly, or divide) means to separate or combine tones. The main forms of articulation are staccato and legato. However, the act of articulation operates to separate, combine and group not only the tones; it also has the effect of separating and in various ways combining the structures constituting the work’s text.

Articulation, in a broad sense, is any activity of a person when they say something […] or, with regard to the results of this activity, any form of semiotic organisation which creates its units.Footnote 1

Since, therefore, articulation is one of the most intrinsic factors of musical expression, the study and understanding of its rules is necessary for all areas of musical activity. According to Isay Braudo (the Russian organist and musicologist), articulation is to be understood as

the art of performing music, primarily melody, by distinguishing and combining its tones to one degree or another; the art of using, when performing, a whole variety of legato and staccato styles.Footnote 2

Articulation is not only clear enunciation—accenting and organising structures—but also the expression of understanding by choosing the appropriate means of sound expression for what is understood.

One says “I know” when one is ready to give compelling grounds. “I know” relates to a possibility of demonstrating the truth.Footnote 3

However, knowing and understanding are different things. You can know a lot, about music too, but not understand it. It is often the case that the performer knows the written text but does not understand the language registered by that written text. And they do not understand that they do not understand what needs to be understood and why. Paul Ricoeur explains this situation in a somewhat figurative sense: “To understand is not merely to repeat the speech event in a similar event, it is to generate a new event beginning from the text in which the initial event has been objectified.”Footnote 4 That means to reproduce the graphic form of a musical text by making it sound, and this is not an interpretive act. Meanwhile, interpretation (articulation is one of its most important factors) manifests itself as a dialectic of understanding and explanation (the Latin interpretātiō meaning explanation). The reason being that interpretation “is not defined by a kind of object—‘inscribed’ signs in the most general sense of the term—but by a kind of process: the dynamic of interpretative reading,”Footnote 5 the separation of meaning and significance in the reading process. This is like other binary processes: intonation—articulation, affect—rhetoric, thought—word. There are two sides to the phenomena where, through what is repeated (in the text), one must arrive at the meaning of what is expressed (by the signs). The relationship with the texts is that of reading, being able to read, knowing from reading, or searching for meaning in what is read.

I am sure [sicher], by reason of what has been said to me, of what I have read, and of my experience […] What we believe depends on what we learn.Footnote 6

The art of articulation, as an integral part of the act of interpretation, has to be learnt from a broader perspective, not only towards music but also towards general cultural phenomena.

It is experience […] that leads us to give credence to others. […] This trust is backed up by my own experience.Footnote 7

The means of articulation must be closely connected with the text of the composition which is the subject of interpretation. According to Wilhelm von Humboldt, “[A]rticulation is based on the power of the spirit to compel the organs to such modifications (Behandlung) of sound as correspond to the form of activity of the spirit itself.”

Accenting, or stress, is fundamentally a dynamic means.

The periodic repetition of the increase of the sound force is analogous to phenomena of the human body and […] psyche. Various organs of the body rhythmically contract (accent) and relax, and the senses in the consciousness […] also divide into accented and non-accented, as attention periodically strengthens and weakens.Footnote 8

Accents are metric, rhythmic and emotional.

Metric accents are initial stresses within the parts of the beat, which at equal time intervals are repeated two, three, four or more times in each beat, according to the division of the beat. In the strong parts of the beat, these accents are more intense, whereas in the weak, non-accented parts, their impact is weaker. This accentuation, as we know from Baroque theory, comes from ancient versification. An example of incorrect accentuation is the way the first word of our national anthem, “Lietuva” (Lithuania), is stressed. Even professional choruses sing the hymn with the stress on the last, and not the first, syllable of the word (the address). This is a sign of ignorance or lack of attention. “Measure is literally measure—nothing more, for example, than the inch of a ruler—thus permitting the existence of any durations, any amplitude relations (meter, accent), any silences.”Footnote 9

Rhythmic accents, together with dynamics, form phrasing. To play without rhythmic accents is equivalent to reading while ignoring punctuation.

Just as the metric accent is sometimes changed by the accent of a word, when it does not coincide with the metric accent, so the rhythmic accent can be modified (transposed or eliminated) by the logical accent of the text. Both metric and rhythmic accents can sometimes be modified or smothered by the emotional accent.Footnote 10 (by the operation of intonation—J. R.)

It is difficult to overestimate the significance of accents in modelling the dynamic—agogic—relief of a musical phrase. The Baroque era is to a greater extent characterised by the metric or regular accent. It was also called “grammatical.” The sound in the strong part used to be lengthened a little but this was compensated by accelerating other sounds. These metric accents were not in any way marked in the text of the notes. Generally speaking, the appearance of articulatory signs in the text dates back to the beginning of the seventeenth century, while a system of such signs in general terms coalesced at the end of the eighteenth century.

In the Classical era, rhythmic accents which vary the monotonous regularity of the metric accentuation became more established. The goal of rhythmic accents is the clarification of the syntactical musical structure. The difference between these two types of accents is well explained by the Russian conductor, Ariy Pazovskiy.

The metric accent […], clearly marking the beginning of the beat […], indicates the meter in which the work is written. The metric accent is not by itself the culmination of rhythmic division and therefore does not have the qualities of attraction, drawing to itself all the other sounds of this group. By itself, it exists only as a hidden metric stroke beneath the surface, without acquiring real accentuation. Rhythmic accent is the richness and diversity of semantic and logical stresses […]. Possessing the power of natural attraction, grouping around itself all the sounds of the particular rhythmic group, rhythmic accents […] form the basis of phrasing.Footnote 11

In the Classical era, a practice of stressing emerges which “gives expression to the melody and is completely subject to the musical laws of feeling.”Footnote 12 Theorists used various terms to describe these irregular accents: oratorical, rhetorical, pathetic, painting-like, reinforcing and even aesthetic. Many forms of their notation appeared, partly duplicating each other. Mozart, for example, used only sf and fp, as well as mfp. Beethoven, meanwhile, used them much more, especially in his late works, with hyperbolised intent, in the following sequence: f, ff, fp, ffp, sf, fz, sfp, sff, sfpp. The Romantic composers reinforced accentuation even further, with the appearance of ffz, fffz and even sffff.Footnote 13 This is a clear appeal to the greatest possible emphasis on the emotional side of the music. As with everything in music, it is a matter of taste and education; so also, the use of one accent or another is a question of intonational, value-based sensitivity.

Every aspiration clearly contains a value consciousness on which it is founded. It appears in the way in which we “feel” the values in question […]. But when we feel unable to attain certain values, value blindness or value delusion may set in.Footnote 14

Emotional accents. Their use depends on the emotional content of the work—to what extent, and how, it is manifested in the musical work. Since emotion cannot be written down, this is a matter of the emotional responsiveness of the interpreter. This is one of the fundamental signs of musicality—an organic reaction to sound, to the emotional impression aroused by the structure being reflected. This is the sphere of the interpreter’s reasonable freedom.

Music means nothing as a thing. A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection.Footnote 15

It is then the interpreter who must resurrect it through their understanding and emotions: to humanise, to personalise it through intonations.

Accentuation is related to the emergence and significance of the bar. In early manuscripts there were no barlines, or indications of tempo or rests. As previously mentioned, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the importance of the bar was particularly emphasised. C. P. E. Bach stated that the basis of performance was the weakness and strength of sound, the stroke (accentuation), embellishments, legato, staccato, vibrato, arpeggiato, the sense of the duration of sounds, ritardando, accelerando and so on. Sources from the period of Leopold Mozart (e.g., Türk and Quantz) clearly show that the soul of performance was precise articulation. At that time, as previously mentioned, music was compared with speech (the Baroque theory of rhetoric), since both speech and music, to convey meaning, use articulation and intonation. Intonation determines articulation. Intonation is the soul of musical language, while articulation is its body, the expression of its perception.