Pincé

What it means

Pincé is the French designation for the mordent: a short ornament in which the main note alternates once quickly with its lower auxiliary note and returns immediately. The word means “pinched” and describes the crisp, gripping effect of the figure.

The ornament belongs to the stock of the agréments, the fixed ornaments of French Baroque music. Unlike Italian practice, in which ornaments were largely freely invented, here every figure is fixed by a sign of its own and explained in tables.

Its counterpart is the tremblement, the French designation for the trill. Together the two form the basic pair of small ornaments: one with the lower, one with the upper auxiliary note.

In the notation

The pincé is notated by a sign of its own, to be found in the tables of the respective edition; in modern editions the familiar mordent sign often appears. Because the signs of the French tradition do not match those in common use today, a look at the printed ornament table is indispensable.

Musical use

The figure co-shapes French harpsichord and lute music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It accents individual notes, brings out dissonances, and gives the sound more presence on instruments with a quickly decaying tone. Ornaments there are not an addition but part of the composition — a piece without them sounds unfinished.

The pincé appears in Couperin's ornament table as the sign for a fast alternation with the lower auxiliary note and corresponds to the German mordent. Execution begins with the main note and is played fast and light. It corresponds to the mordent.

Performance practice

Execute the figure on the beat and keep it short; the main note must remain distinct. Do not accent the auxiliary note. Look up the sign in the edition's table before executing it, and do not transfer the meaning it has in other traditions. And execute the ornament at the tempo of the piece, not faster.