What does portato mean in music?

Bowing & articulation

Portato

Italian, "carried" · Also: louré, slurred staccato

Portato is a bowing in which several notes share one bow stroke but are gently separated by a pulse of pressure, notated as dots or dashes under a slur.

The bow never leaves the string. Each note within the slur gets a small swell of weight and a slight release, so the notes are articulated without being detached. The result sits exactly between legato and staccato, which is what makes it useful: a composer can ask for a line that breathes without breaking.

Dashes under a slur mean a gentle, sustained separation; dots under a slur are lighter and often faster, and at speed the same notation becomes slurred staccato or ricochet. Reading the difference is a matter of tempo and context rather than of the symbol alone.

The French name louré attaches particularly to the slow, weighted version, and it is common in Baroque repertoire where it colours a stepwise line.

Legato: Legato is playing notes smoothly connected with no audible gap between them; on a string instrument it usually means several notes under one bow, indicated by a slur.
Staccato: Staccato shortens a note, notated with a dot above or below the notehead, so it sounds for roughly half its written value and is followed by silence.
Détaché: Détaché is the basic string bowing in which each note gets its own bow stroke, changing direction between notes while the bow stays on the string.
Slur: A slur is a curved line over two or more different pitches indicating they should be played smoothly connected, on strings, in a single bow stroke.

Every term in this glossary is taught in context somewhere in Arco's curricula, on the staff, on the keyboard, and on your own fingerboard at the same time.

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