Upside down downbow sign?

[LSL2026]

what could this symbol mean?

My snarky response is always:

what could this symbol mean?

It means she didn't know what she was doing

I'm saying this because if I make a quip like that, then usually someone will come out of the woodwork with a "Oh, this is the symbol use in the bladebla region of bladenstein during the hungoverian period of 1892-1897" to make me look like a fool!!!

But this goes back to my post of "composer as infallible" - some of these people were working in relative isolation and developing their own idiosyncratic notation (without explaining it...) and some of them just "did what they thought was right" when it wasn't. I'm not saying that's surely the case, but it is a possibility. And considering the colon after the dynamic...maybe she only had access to really old scores or something - who knows.

Looks like a tongue...

[harpsi]

I am not so sure about that. Probably she knew exactly what she wanted, there might be reasons to using this particular sign that we don't know about. After all, the same sign is replicated in the conductor's score and in the parts.

Sweden was of course a bit outside the centre of action on the continent, but Munktell did study in Paris for among others Vincent d'Indy.

[John Ruggero]

According to online sources, Monktell was a student and then a protege of d'Indy, who promoted her music. She must have been a well-trained musician. Her music appears completely orthodox in notation, uses all the standard articulation markings including tenuto and marcato symbols and is much like other late Romantics. Her violin sonata contains the following, which appears to be a down bow indication. What it is doing in wind parts is a mystery. Perhaps it is intended to be something special. I found nothing else like it in her other music at IMSLP.

Munktell sign.png (460.18 KiB) Viewed 109 times

Munktell.png (931.28 KiB) Viewed 109 times

[David Ward]

… … … What it is doing in wind parts is a mystery. Perhaps it is intended to be something special… … …

Maybe, play as if with a down bow attack? If somebody had asked me to do that on my trombone, I would have understood what they wanted (but then I had played the cello in adolescence).

[John Ruggero]

Maybe, play as if with a down bow attack? If somebody had asked me to do that on my trombone, I would have understood what they wanted (but then I had played the cello in adolescence)

That had occurred to me as well, David. Pianists are also accustomed to mimicking effects used for other instruments. If true, it is a very interesting notation.