Loading…
Loading…
Well, indeed; presumably. Rare as a marking: met inside longer German instructions and footnotes (wohl aber, ‘but certainly’).
Seldom a marking by itself. It turns up inside longer German instructions and composers’ footnotes, as in Beethoven’s note in the Ninth that six bars may be left out “nicht vom Chor, wohl aber von dem Solosänger”. A reader should also beware: over the opening of Beethoven’s Op. 81a, “wohl” is the last syllable of “Le-be-wohl”, not a direction.
It qualifies rather than commands — ‘indeed’, ‘presumably’, and in wohl aber a concession: ‘not this, but certainly that’. Use it in prose notes to performers, where its shading of certainty is useful. In short performance markings, a plainer word such as etwas or ziemlich reads faster and leaves less doubt about what you want.
Wohl is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
Browse the full dictionary →