Ornaments
Small notes or signs beside the main note — shaping the melodic surface
Related
Ornaments are the small notes and signs beside or above the main note: appoggiaturas, mordents, turns, trills, slides and more. They shape the melody's detail and manner, and sometimes carry harmonic tension.
They are not "optional frills": in Baroque and Classical music ornaments are grammar the performer is expected to complete, and can affect how the harmony resolves. The usual mistake is to think fewer ornaments are cleaner — remove them and some phrases lose their weight; ornaments are not decoration but part of the sentence.
Read deeper → appoggiatura
Sources
- 装饰音的类型与历史演变，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Ornamentation"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.