Every music student will eventually be confronted with the Italian word staccato. It is usually translated in English as “short”. The French translation, however, gives us a better idea: détaché. In English, detached.

There can be a significant difference between the meanings of the words “short” and “detached”. Something that is short means its length (or height) is not very great. In music we deal with sounds, length of sounds in time, so “short” means not very long in duration.

The word “detached”, however, does not speak about the length of time. It merely means separation. To detach one sound from another in music is to separate the sounds.  It is true, of course, that in order to detach one sound from another, it is necessary to make the first sound shorter to create the separation– but not always short.  Get the idea?  There is a subtle — but important — difference between short and shorter.  Every musician needs to understand the difference, otherwise he will misinterpret the meaning of staccato.

For many pianists the idea of staccato presents a particular problem: they don’t understand how staccato applies artistically, and therefore they often make bad judgments how to play music that is marked staccato.  The result is often a clipped, and somewhat harsher sound from the keyboard, whereas the particular composition is just asking for sounds that are détaché.

Music is a form of communication. Like the use of other art forms, such as painting, there are ways of communicating ideas.  Sometimes to communicate, you need to highlight one note or section to make it stand out.  We do this in normal speech every day, laying emphasis on words in various ways.  If you were painting a green tree on a hill covered by green grass, one of the things that would be necessary to address is this: how will you make the tree stand out from the background. You have several options:

• Make the tree a different color
• Make the tree a darker or lighter shade of green than the background
• Put an outline around the tree.

Each of thee “techniques” has its musical equivalent.  To make something a different color, you change its audible image, say from very high notes to very low notes.

To make something darker or lighter, you make the audible sound louder or softer.

When it comes to putting an outline around music, you ask how do you make outlines?  The answer is that you use contrasts: black against white, yellow against blue.  Contrast are usually opposites, as you see here.

Now in music the opposite to sound is silence, and you put silence between notes to make them stand out. There are ways of doing this in music.  A silent note (a rest) is one way to place a longer silence.  But for a shorter silence, the composer will place the staccato sign (a dot) above or below a note.  The instruction?  Highlight the note, make it stand out.

So the artistic meaning of staccato is to put silence between the notes. In other words, you detach the sounds from one another.  You can say you make the sounds shorter, but not necessarily short.  A long note (a half note, for example) may have a staccato symbol.  It does not mean to play the note like a sixteenth note, or an eighth note, or even a quarter note.  If the composer had wanted quarter notes he would write them, then put rests in between.

But it’s not that simple.  When you see, in Beethoven’s music, for example, a staccato in the middle of a long run of sixteenth notes that are running quickly, you know he cannot mean to play the note shorter or detached: you don’t have time to do that.

But if you understand that the purpose of staccato is to make something stand out, then your artist’s pallette can be used to solve the problem of the staccato.  In the case of the Beethoven example, you would need to hit the note a little firmer, playing it louder, making it stand out.

Voilà!  Staccato achieved, but not by playing the note short or even shorter.

If you played violin instead of piano you may not have made this mistake in understanding staccato.  String instrumentalists have a bowing technique known as détaché.  When the violinist sees a number of notes with the staccato symbol over (or under) them, he knows he is to play one note for each stroke of the bow.  That means he has to change the direction of the bow after each note.  The idea is not to put silence between the notes, but the change in direction of the bow creates a new emphasis — a highlight — of the notes.   Artistic effect achieved.

For some reason, which seems to be related to technique issues in piano playing, staccato has lost its older meaning, and so many performances of older works lose the character and the intention of the composer.  This is not always bad, since there is always artistic “license” — aesthetics –  involved in interpreting music.  But just like poetry, music interpretation is bound by its context and the effect the music is design to have.  There is a place for a very crisp emphasis, which the violinists call spiccato.  It’s a variation by degree of the meaning of staccato.  The string player can also make use of martelé or ricochet and dance his bow around to make notes stand out in a brilliant fashion.

The piano is not a member of the string instruments: it is a member of the percussion group.  The art of good piano playing is to make a percussive instrument sing like the violin, dance like the piccolo, rumble like the double bass and tubas, and provide an exciting night of musical enjoyment.  This is not achieved by approaching the keyboard with a hand that is intent on imitating a sledgehammer.  Instead, it requires hours of skill and practice, of perfecting a “technique” that gives an audience enjoyment, and a chance to relax and recharge their spiritual and emotional batteries.

Avoid the mistake of translating staccato as “short”.  You need to be more creative than that. Think of it as shorter or detached.  Better still, think of it as an instruction from the composer to make something stand out.  Then use your artistic judgment to make that happen.