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In music, ornaments or embellishments are musical flourishes—typically, added notes—that are not essential to carry the overall line of the melody (or harmony), but serve instead to decorate or "ornament" that line (or harmony), provide added interest and variety, and give the performer the opportunity to add expressiveness to a song or piece. Many ornaments are performed as "fast notes" around a central, main Musical note.
There are many types of ornaments, ranging from the addition of a single, short grace note before a main note to the performance of a Virtuoso and flamboyant trill. The amount of ornamentation in a piece of music can vary from quite extensive (it was often extensive in the Baroque music, from 1600 to 1750) to relatively little or even none. The word agrément is used specifically to indicate the French Baroque style of ornamentation.
Ornamentation may also be indicated by the composer. A number of standard ornaments (described below) are indicated with standard symbols in music notation, while other ornamentations may be appended to the score in small notes, or simply written out normally as fully sized notes. Frequently, a composer will have his or her own vocabulary of ornaments, which will be explained in a preface, much like a code. A grace note is a note written in smaller type, with or without a slash through it, to indicate that its note value does not count as part of the total time value of the bar. Alternatively, the term may refer more generally to any of the small notes used to mark some other ornament (see below), or in association with some other ornament's indication (see below), regardless of the timing used in the execution.
In Spain, melodies ornamented upon repetition ("divisions") were called "diferencias", and can be traced back to 1538, when Luis de Narváez published the first collection of such music for the vihuela.Elaine Sisman, "Variations, §4: Origins", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan, 2001).
At a moderate tempo, the above might be executed as follows:
In Baroque music, the trill is sometimes indicated with a + (plus) sign above or below the note.
In the late 18th century, when performers played a trill, it always started from the upper note. However, "[Heinrich Koch]] expressed no preference and observed that it was scarcely a matter of much importance whether the trill began one way or the other, since there was no audible difference after the initial note had been sounded." Clive Brown writes that "Despite three different ways of showing the trills, it seems likely that a trill beginning with the upper note and ending with a turn was envisaged in each case."
Sometimes it is expected that the trill will end with a turn (by sounding the note below rather than the note above the principal note, immediately before the last sounding of the principal note), or some other variation. Such variations are often marked with a few grace notes following the note that bears the trill indication.
There is also a single tone trill variously called trillo or tremolo in late Renaissance and early Baroque. Trilling on a single note is particularly idiomatic for the bowed strings.
As with the trill, the exact speed with which a mordent is performed will vary according to the tempo of the piece, but, at a moderate tempo, the above might be executed as follows:
Confusion over the meaning of the unadorned word mordent has led to the modern terms upper and lower mordent being used, rather than mordent and inverted mordent. Practice, notation, and nomenclature vary widely for all of these ornaments; that is to say, whether, by including the symbol for a mordent in a Sheet music, a composer intended the direction of the additional note (or notes) to be played above or below the principal note written on the sheet music varies according to when the piece was written, and in which country.
In the Baroque music, a mordant (the German language or Scots language equivalent of mordent) was what later came to be called an inverted mordent and what is now often called a lower mordent. In the 19th century, however, the name mordent was generally applied to what is now called the upper mordent. Although mordents are now thought of as a single alternation between notes, in the Baroque period a mordant may have sometimes been executed with more than one alternation between the indicated note and the note below, making it a sort of inverted trill. Mordents of all sorts might typically, in some periods, begin with an extra inessential note (the lesser, added note), rather than with the principal note as shown in the examples here. The same applies to trills, which in the Baroque and Classical periods would begin with the added, upper note. A lower inessential note may or may not be chromatically raised (that is, with a natural, a sharp, or even a double sharp) to make it one semitone lower than the principal note.
may be executed as
The exact speed with which a turn is executed can vary, as can its rhythm. The question of how a turn is best executed is largely one of context, convention, and taste. The lower and upper added notes may or may not be chromatically raised.
An inverted turn (the note below the one indicated, the note itself, the note above it, and the note itself again) is usually indicated by putting a short vertical line through the normal turn sign, though sometimes the sign itself is turned upside down.
An appoggiatura is often written as a grace note prefixed to a principal note and printed in small character, without the oblique stroke:
This may be executed as follows:
In the 19th century, the acciaccatura (sometimes called short appoggiatura) came to be a shorter variant of the long appoggiatura, where the delay of the principal note is quick. It is written using a grace note (often a quaver, or eighth note), with an oblique stroke through the stem. In the Classical period, an acciaccatura is usually performed before the beat and the emphasis is on the main note, not the grace note. The appoggiatura long or short has the emphasis on the grace note.
The exact interpretation of this will vary according to the tempo of the piece, but the following is possible:
Whether the note should be played before or on the beat is largely a question of taste and performance practice. Exceptionally, the acciaccatura may be notated in the bar preceding the note to which it is attached, showing that it is to be played before the beat. The implication also varies with the composer and the period. For example, Mozart's and Joseph Haydn's long appoggiaturas are – to the eye – indistinguishable from Mussorgsky's and Sergei Prokofiev's before-the-beat acciaccaturas.
All of the intervening Diatonic scale or chromatic notes (depending on instrument and context) are heard, albeit very briefly. In this way, the glissando differs from portamento. In contemporary classical music (especially in avant garde pieces), a glissando tends to assume the whole value of the initial note.
The first definition of Nachschlag refers to the "shaken" or trilled version of the ornament, while the second definition refers to the "smooth" version. This ornament has also been referred to as a cadent or a springer in English Baroque performance practice. Instruction books from the Baroque period, such as Christopher Simpson's The Division Violist, refer to the cadent as an ornament in which "a Note is sometimes graced by joyning part of its sound to the note following... whose following Quaver is Placed with the ensuing Note, but played with the same Bow."
Until the last decade of the 16th century the emphasis is on divisions, also known as diminutions, passaggi (in Italian), gorgia ("throat", first used as a term for vocal ornamentation by Nicola Vicentino in 1555), or glosas (by Ortiz, in both Spanish and Italian) – a way to decorate a simple cadence or interval with extra shorter notes. These start as simple passing notes, progress to step-wise additions and in the most complicated cases are rapid passages of equal valued notes – virtuosic flourishes. There are rules for designing them, to make sure that the original structure of the music is left intact. Towards the end of this period the divisions detailed in the treatises contain more dotted and other uneven rhythms and leaps of more than one step at a time.
Starting with (1589), the treatises bring in a new set of expressive devices called graces alongside the divisions. These have a lot more rhythmic interest and are filled with affect as composers took much more interest in text portrayal. It starts with the trillo and cascate, and by the time we reach Francesco Rognoni (1620) we are also told about fashionable ornaments: portar la voce, accento, tremolo, gruppo, esclamatione and intonatio.
Key treatises detailing ornamentation:
In the 19th century, performers were adding or improvising ornaments on compositions. As C.P.E Bach observed, "pieces in which all ornaments are indicated need give no trouble; on the other hand, pieces in which little or nothing is marked must be supplied with ornaments in the usual way." Clive Brown explains that "For many connoisseurs of that period the individuality of a performer's embellishment of the divine notation was a vital part of the musical experience."
In Beethoven's work, however, there should not be any additional ornament added from a performer. Even in Mozart's compositions, ornaments not included in the score are not allowed, as Brown explains: "Most of the chamber music from Mozart onwards that still remains in the repertoire belongs to the kind in which every note is thought out and which tolerates virtually no ornamental additions of the type under consideration here..." Recent scholarship has however brought this statement in question.Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine: , lecture given at Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
Another important gamaka in Carnatic is the "Sphuritam" which is about rendering a note twice but forcefully from a grace note immediately below it the second time. For instance, the third note (Ga) would be rendered plain first time and with a force from the second (Ri) the next time.
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