Tenuto and Portato

The tenuto mark is by far the most confusing symbol in all of musical notation.  I’ve noticed that transfer students rarely even know what it is called, much less know how to interpret it.  I have observed confusion and misinterpretation about the mark among music teachers.   I certainly can’t blame them!  This article will clarify the various meanings of the tenuto mark (and go over the portato while we’re at it).

Let’s start our investigation by seeing what my two pocket dictionaries say (emphasis added):

Pronouncing Pocket-Manual of Musical Terms.  G. Schirmer, New York, Dr. Theodore Baker, ed., 1947.

Essential Dictionary of Music, 2nd edition. Alfred Publishing Company, Inc., Los Angeles, Lindsey Harnsberger, ed., 1997.

Simple enough?  If that were truly what the tenuto meant, it would be.  Unfortunately, the tenuto almost never behaves that way!  To make matters worse, the tenuto has, as I count them, four different meanings, or five if we count the portato!  But don’t feel overwhelmed.  We will cover these meanings quickly with clear examples and audio clips to support most of the examples.

The most common usages of the tenuto are, by far, to hold a note beyond its full value and to give a note mild dynamic emphasis.  I only give both of these definitions at once because our first example actually contains both examples.  And what other composer would this be than the great King of Overediting Himself, Sergei Rachmaninov.  I say this in great respect - his music is absolutely fantastic.  It’s just that Rachmaninov is also the only composer I know of who can sometimes put more dynamic/articulation marks in a measure than there are notes.

Play the audio now and observe what Evgeny Kissin does with all the yellow-highlighted tenuto marks.

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Rachmaninov – Piano Concerto No. 3, mvt. 1, last cadenza (Evgeny Kissin, piano)

The first tenuto marks (second measure) indicate mild dynamic accentuation.  Heavier dynamic accentuation would be indicated with an actual accent mark, heavy accent mark, or sforzando.  I like to think of the “dynamic tenuto” as a way of notating, “Make sure these notes sing out.”  Other heavier accent symbols don’t necessarily sing and can be more pecussive in nature.

The rest of the tenuto marks indicate holding notes longer than their full length.  The word “ten.” acts as a more intense stretching of time than if simple tenuto lines were written.  The five tenuto marks in a row in the last line are Rachmaninov’s way of telling the performer not to take off suddenly and give each of those beginning notes additional importance of length.  It’s a way of saying, “Let each of these notes have individuality before the actual passagework begins.”

Another common usage of the tenuto is to mean non-legato/detached.  Yes, that’s right, one “detached” tenuto can tell us to do almost the opposite of what another “more than full value” tenuto mark tells us to do.  The only way we can tell the difference is by using context.  The detached tenuto occurs in pieces that are typically faster and more articulated than the lush Rachmaninov above.  Here is an example of “detached” tenuto marks (Tcherepnin’s Bagatelle, Op. 5 No. 1):

The green highlighted tenuto marks serve as our context clues that confirm detachment for all tenuto marks.  Let’s use process of elimination to figure out what the green tenutos (and therefore the yellow tenutos as well) mean:

1. Mild dynamic accent?  These tenuto marks are already paired with normal accent marks, so we can be pretty sure the tenuto marks here are not dynamic in nature.
2. Hold longer than full value?  In the context of such a bold, militaristic march, this simply wouldn’t make any musical sense.  It would sound like the performer is having a hard time keeping a steady tempo.  Not to say rubato can’t be used in this piece at all – some rubato could be nice in certain transitional spots in this piece, but the second line of music is not one of them.
3. Hold for exactly full value?  Looking at the second page of this music (right) when the main theme returns, one notices it is notated with slurs (green).  Slurs indicate legato, and true legato is synonymous with “giving notes their full value”.  In other words, if Tcherepnin wanted the tenuto notes in the beginning to be given exactly their full value, it would have been much easier to put all of them underneath a slur. 

This leaves us no other choice but to conclude that Tcherepnin is using the tenuto in the first example to mean almost legato, while the tenuto marks in the second example are mild accents since they are paired up with slurs and pedal (which already takes care of articulation).

We’ve now seen examples of tenuto that involve all definitions except what is found in the music dictionary.  Finding a tenuto example that literally tells the performer to hold the note for “exactly its full value” was difficult!  I had to resort to a heavily-edited Haydn sonata (edited and fingered by Ludwig Klee and Dr. Sigmund Lebert).  The performer in the audio recording does not agree with the editor on the first two (yellow) tenutos, so you won’t hear those notes held.  But you’ll hear the green one held:

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Haydn – Sonata Hob. XVI:13 in E (Partita/Divertimento) – mvt. 3 (Piazzini, piano)

And now for the portato.  Below is an excerpt from a late beginner level piece called “Scherzino” by Maykapar.  Highlighted in yellow are portatos, which is what you call tenuto and staccato found on the same note.  Think of a portato as a staccato with a little length to it, typically getting around 50% of its value.  This comes across as a “long” or “sticky” staccato.

In this example, we also get another example of the “full length” or perhaps “almost full length” tenuto (in green).  Regardless of exact length, one can be sure that Maykapar didn’t want the green tenuto chord to be played with as much detachment as the portato chords leading up to it, since it makes the phrase sound “clipped” at the end.

Portato is sometimes called mezzo-staccato, and it can also be indicated with slurs over staccato marks.  However, slurs over staccatos does not always imply portato articulation:  sometimes a slur mark is not an articulation mark at all, but simply a structural indication of note groupings which might effect dynamic shaping and rubato instead of articulation.  In other words, composers are allowed to group even very staccato notes (marked with pointy “staccatissimo” signs) under a slur to indicate where phrases begin and end.

After all this terrible tenuto madness, there is one item of good news.  Music dictionaries are finally starting to catch on to the fact that “full length tenutos” are hardly ever used.  As reported by the Virginia Tech Multimedia Music Dictionary:

This definition doesn’t cover all possibilities, but at least it focuses on one of the most common tenuto usages rather than the least common!  Even so, the fact remains that one can only determine what a tenuto really refers to by looking at context clues, which include the style/era of the music, the composer, the tempo/mood marking, and other dynamic/articulative marks in the measure.  Even with this knowledge, inexperienced pianists will usually still need the guidance of their teachers to make sure their tenutos are being interpreted correctly.  But knowing the realm of possibility is a great start!

(c) 2010 Cerebroom