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Decorative notes added to a melody — including trills, mordents, turns, grace notes, and appoggiaturas.
Ornaments embellish the skeleton of a melody. In Baroque music, performers were expected to add ornaments; Classical composers wrote them out more precisely. Use ornaments to add grace and brilliance, but don't over-ornament — the underlying melody should remain clear.
C.P.E. Bach's treatise "On the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments" codifies ornament practice — every aspiring composer should study it.
Ornament is one of 1760 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 →