Accent

What it means

The accent calls for a single note to be brought out. The common sign is a horizontal wedge that tapers to a point on the right and stands above or below the notehead. The emphasis happens through a more definite beginning of the note: it is set with more insistence but is not then held louder.

To distinguish it from similar signs: marcato, an upright wedge, calls for a stronger and at the same time heavier emphasis in which the note takes on weight; the ordinary accent is lighter and concerns above all the attack. Sforzando counts as the sharpest form and is notated as a letter sign. Tenuto, by contrast, does not emphasise but calls for full holding of the note value — this too can act like an emphasis, but it happens through duration and not through the attack.

In the notation

The sign stands on the side of the notehead away from the stem, and for beamed groups uniformly for the whole group. It can coincide with other articulation signs: with a staccato dot into a short, accented note, with a tenuto line into an accented, full note. Under a slur an accent means that the note stands out within the slurred line, without the slur being cancelled.

Musical use

Accents articulate the music. They confirm metric emphases or — more often and more effectively — override them, by stressing weak beats and so displacing the metre. In dance-like music they mark the characteristic accents of the particular dance; in polyphonic textures they lift thematic entries out of the web of voices.

Performance practice

Set the accent in the attack and pull back afterward, instead of playing on louder. Relate its strength to the surroundings: in a quiet section even an accented note stays quiet. See that the note does not become hard — insistence arises from a definite beginning, not from pressure. And check whether the accent stands on a weak beat: there it is intended and must be clearly audible.