Ornament
- Ornaments are "frills" or embellishments made on notes.
- An ornament is basically a historic shorthand method of indicating how a single note
can be made more interesting.
- Ornaments first started to be used at the beginning of the 17th century, but the
methods used to notate them varied quite a lot, and in some cases they were not
indicated at all, but just assumed.
- Their use became much less common towards the end of the 18th century, and the
notation for those that were used became reasonably standardised.
- Those which are seen in modern editions of works of this period
include (in no particular order):
- Trill - a rapid shake between an added note and the main note
- Mordent - a single movement from the main note then down or up then back to the main note
- Grace note or acciaccatura (pronouced atch-ack-a-too-ra) - a quick movement from an unaccented added note to the main note
- Appoggiatura (pronouced appog-a-too-ra) - a slower movement from an accented added note to the main note
- Arpeggio - a spread chord, so playing the notes of a chord rapidly after each other, usually starting at the bottom
- Turn - a quick movement around a note, usually up, down and up again
The folowing (unrealistic) example shows all six ornaments in the same order as listed above. The stave below shows approximately how it should be played.
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