Corta figure

The Corta figure (from Italian corta , short) is a musical rhetorical figure in which three short notes ( eighth or sixteenth notes ) are combined so that two of them add up to the length of the third.

In the music theory literature of the 17th century the following description can be found:

"Figura Corta consists of three quick notes / one of which is as long / as the other two at the same time"

- Wolfgang Caspar Printz : Phrynis Mytilanaeus, part 2, p. 54

Neither the length nor any emphasis is fixed. Possible motives are therefore:

$\ relative c '{\ major c8 d16 c16}$

$\ relative c '{\ major e16 d16 c8}$

$\ relative c '{\ major d16 f8 e16}$

etc.

Albert Schweitzer interpreted this motif in Johann Sebastian Bach's cantatas as a “joy motif ”.

literature

Dietrich Bartel: Musica Poetica. Musical-Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music . University of Nebraska, 1997, ISBN 978-0-8032-3593-9
Günther Zedler: The preserved church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach (Mühlhausen, Weimar, Leipzig I). Meetings in the form of analyzes - explanations - interpretations . Norderstedt 2009, ISBN 978-3-8370-4401-0 , p. 38 ff.