[11.]—In pianoforte music a note is very occasionally intended to be reiterated before the first iteration has ceased to sound. This is effected by allowing the key to rise sufficiently to release the hammer, but not sufficiently to reimpose the damper on the string. The second sound therefore overtakes the first. (It is comparatively easy on some pianos and very hard on others.) As the sound, though periodically reinforced, is continuous, the composer indicates his intention by a tie. There is nothing but one's judgment to distinguish this from the ordinary kind of tie. The chief indication is the employment of a tie where a single musical character would otherwise have been better. For instance, the following tied sixteenth notes from the Adagio of Beethoven's Sonata, Op. 106, could better have been represented by eighth notes, had it not been for the intention of overlapping iteration ([Fig. 6]).
Fig. 6.
The ties commencing in measure 134 of Beethoven's well-known Sonata Pastorale were evidently regarded by Cipriani Potter as of this order. As having been a personal friend of Beethoven's he was likely to know. (The great composer refers to him in corresponding with Ries in 1818.) The duration of these notes could not have been written otherwise than by means of ties. The above test is therefore inapplicable; this is evidently why, in the edition edited by Potter, they are marked with a tie plus a dot and horizontal stroke ([Fig. 6a]).
Fig. 6a.
Another indication is the tying of an unaccented note to an accented one, thus obliterating the accent if the tie be observed literally (instances occur in Chopin's Valse, Op. 31, No. 1). So much critical judgment, however, is required to distinguish this treatment from that proper to a tie, that composers would do well to adopt some such method as Cipriani Potter's to make their exact meaning clear.
This interpretation of a tie, according to which the notes, since they overlap, are just not separated, must not be confused with the mezzo-staccato touch, also indicated with a slur, but having dots also (in the case of a single note indicated by a stroke with a dot), and which means that the notes are to be just not joined. In legato, of course, they should be neither separated nor overlapping, but exactly contiguous.