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I just found a Bach score (Invention #1, BWV 772), and there is this squiggly line above the B eighth note in the first measure (and a few other places). This is the score. What does it mean?

Bach Invention #1, m. 1

guidot
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Jacob Swanson
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1 Answers1

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That is a trill, not a mordent. It actually starts on the upper auxiliary. The table below is from the Clavier-Büchlein vor Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, i.e., it is Bach's own. You can read more about it here.

This a duplicate of this question.

enter image description here

Community
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    It only has meaning in how it is played, Jacob. It's called a trill and it's played as one. –  Jun 26 '15 at 04:41
  • it actually does look like a mordent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordent) and not a trill (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trill_(music)). – Jacob Swanson Jun 26 '15 at 04:45
  • My pleasure. The thing to remember about the Baroque is that ornaments using the upper auxiliary (when they weren't sliding up to it from beneath the principal note) tended to act like appoggiature: they almost always started on the dissonance. –  Jun 26 '15 at 05:05
  • Thanks for correcting me on that. I deleted my incorrect answer that said it was a mordant. It's confusing how Bach used symbols differently than we do now! – Nick B. Jun 26 '15 at 15:07
  • @NickB., blame the Romantics for that one. It was pretty much in their time that trills and trill variants that commence on the main note rather than the auxiliary became the norm. ;) –  Jun 26 '15 at 15:53