Teilen

As Printed on a Score

Rarely printed alone. On scores it appears almost always in the negative, “nicht teilen!”, over a string part with double stops, or inside a longer instruction telling a section how to divide. The usual German divisi marking is the participle geteilt (get.), cancelled by nicht geteilt.

How Composers Use It

When you want a section split, the conventional marking is geteilt or divisi, not the infinitive; reserve teilen for a fuller sentence — how many groups, or by desk — when the plain marking would be ambiguous. Its practical life is in the negative: nicht teilen tells string players to play every note of a chord themselves rather than sharing it with a desk partner.

Related Terms