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What Is An Ornament?: Turns

Ornaments are musical notes or symbols used to decorate or embellish a melody line. Some common types of ornaments discussed are turns, mordents, trills, acciaccaturas, and appoggiaturas. Turns split a note into a group of faster notes, starting and ending on the main note. Mordents quickly alternate between a note and the one above or below. Trills rapidly alternate between a note and the one above. Acciaccaturas and appoggiaturas are grace notes played quickly before the main note at a faster tempo. Ornaments add musical complexity and interest beyond just the core melody.

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Jose Ricardo P. Ferrer
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123 views5 pages

What Is An Ornament?: Turns

Ornaments are musical notes or symbols used to decorate or embellish a melody line. Some common types of ornaments discussed are turns, mordents, trills, acciaccaturas, and appoggiaturas. Turns split a note into a group of faster notes, starting and ending on the main note. Mordents quickly alternate between a note and the one above or below. Trills rapidly alternate between a note and the one above. Acciaccaturas and appoggiaturas are grace notes played quickly before the main note at a faster tempo. Ornaments add musical complexity and interest beyond just the core melody.

Uploaded by

Jose Ricardo P. Ferrer
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is an ornament?

In architecture, ornamentation is used to decorate and give interest and character to a


building.

Think of the last cathedral you visited, how much of the ornamentation was necessary
for it to function as a church?

Not much, but it’s there to give interest and impress you with its decoration.

In music, ornaments are used in much the same way. They’re not often essential to the
melody of a piece but are used to “show off” and provide a different layer of musical
complexity.

Types of ornaments
There are lots of different types of ornaments that you’re likely to see when reading and
playing music.

 Turns

Turns
The symbol for a turn ornament is a curled S shape turned on its side and it sits above
a note on the stave.

There are two types of turn that we’re going to look at:

 Regular turns
 Inverted turns

Regular turns
First up we have a regular turn. When you see this symbol it means that you should
actually split the note into four different notes.

So if we had a crotchet turn we would play four semiquavers starting with the
one above the main note, the main note, then the note below followed by the last note
which is the main note again.
Inverted turns
Next, we’re going to look at another type of turn called the inverted turn. There are two
ways to write an inverted turn. Both mean the same thing.
The way to write an inverted turn is just like a regular turn but with a line straight through
the middle. The second way is to draw the turn upside down or ‘inverted’.

Inverted turns start on the note below the main note, followed by the main note, then
the note above, finishing on the original note again.

 Mordents

Mordents
Up next we have the mordent which is a short ornament that means you should quickly
alternate between the main note and the note above or below.

You draw a mordent by using a short wavy line above a note like this:

Like turns there are two types of mordent:

 Mordents (or upper mordents)


 Lower mordents
Let’s start by looking at an upper mordent.

Mordents (upper mordents)


An upper mordent is made up of three notes, starting on the principal note, going up to
the note above and then back to the principal note again.
The first two notes are played very quickly and are usually demisemiquavers like so:
Lower mordents (inverted mordents)
A lower mordent is almost exactly the same as an upper mordent but instead of
alternating to the note above the principal note they go down to the note below.

Lower mordents have a line straight through the middle of the wavy line (like an inverted
turn).

The way I remember the difference is that if it has a Line through it must be a Lower
ornament.

 Trills

Trills
A trill or ‘shake‘ symbol indicates that you should alternate between the given note (the
principal note) and the note above it (the auxiliary note) quickly and repeatedly.
It’s like a mordent but you alternate a lot more times.

The symbol for a trill is to write the letters ‘tr’ above a note:

When it comes to writing and playing trills there are a few rules to follow but they
depend on the context of the music that you’re playing.

The general rules these days are that:


 You should begin the trill on the principal note
 You should end the trill on the principal note

But that wasn’t always the case, in music written before around 1800 it was the
convention to begin a trill on the note above the principal note.

Anway, here’s an example of a trill on a crotchet and what you’d play:

Because trills should always finish on the principal note it’s very common to add a triplet
on the last notes.

Trills before the 1800s


As I mentioned earlier, nowadays trills should start on the principal note but, if the music
was written before 1800 you’d likely start a trill on the note above like so:

 Acciaccaturas

The acciaccatura
The acciaccatura is also known as a ‘grace note‘ or a ‘crushed note‘ and is very
common in lots of classical music.
It is written like this as a very small note with a line through its stem like so:

Acciaccaturas are to be played as quickly as possible before the main note they’re
written in front of.

Essentially they’re played as a demisemiquaver which is subtracted from the original


value of the note it’s written in front of.
 Appoggiaturas

The appoggiatura
An appoggiatura is another type of grace note and is very similar to an acciaccatura.
The difference between them is that it’s written without a line through its stem and tail.

Generally, appoggiaturas are played one note above or below the main note they’re in
front of.

They should also be held for half the value of the principal note.

As you can see in the example above, an appoggiatura in front of a minim should be
played as if it were a crotchet.

But, if you had an appoggiatura in front of a crotchet it would be played as if it were a


quaver.

Ornaments overview
One of the best pieces to look at when talking about
ornaments is Chopin’s Nocturne in Eb major.

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