Portato

Template:Short description Template:Use shortened footnotes Portato (; Italian past participle of portare, "to carry"), also mezzo-staccato, French notes portées,Template:R in music denotes a smooth, pulsing articulation and is often notated by adding dots under slur markings.

Portato is also known as articulated legato.Template:R

Description

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   \relative c {
       b-.( c-. d-. b-.)
   } }

</score>

One type of portato notation, also used for staccato and flying spiccato.

Portato is a bowing technique for bowed stringed instrumentsTemplate:R in which successive notes are gently re-articulated while being joined under a single continuing bow stroke. It achieves a kind of pulsation or undulation, rather than separating the notes. It has been notated in various ways. One early 19th-century writer, Pierre Baillot (L'art du violon, Paris, 1834), gives two alternatives: a wavy line, and dots under a slur. Later in the century a third method became common: placing "legato" dashes (tenuto) under a slur.Template:R The notation with dots under slurs is ambiguous, because it is also used for very different bowings, including staccato and flying spiccato.Template:R Currently, portato is sometimes indicated in words, by "mezzo-staccato" or "non-legato"; or can be shown by three graphic forms:

• a slur that encompasses a phrase of staccato notes (the most common), or
• a tenuto above a staccato mark (very often), or
• a slur that encompasses a phrase of tenuto notes (less common).Template:R

Portato is defined by some authorities as "the same as portamento".Template:R

See also

• Legato
• Bariolage