_-_Music_Party_in_a_Landscape_-_329_-_Fitzwilliam_Museum.jpg "Nicolas Lancret — Music Party in a Landscape")
| What it means | An auxiliary note that leans expressively towards a principal note, usually resolving to it by step. |
|---|---|
| How it is notated | Often as a small note without a slash through the stem; it may also be written in ordinary note values. |
| When it sounds | The characteristic long appoggiatura begins on the beat and borrows time from the following note. |
| Harmonic function | In its textbook form, an accented dissonant note approached by leap and resolved by step. |
| Its expressive role | Weight, a moment of tension, the expectation of arrival, and the release that follows. |
Play a C major chord in the left hand and an E with it in the right. Now repeat the phrase, keeping the chord and the pulse exactly where they were. This time, let F sound with the chord and move to E halfway through the beat. Both versions finish on the same pitch. The difference is what we hear in the time leading up to it. In the first version, E is simply part of the chord. In the second, the ear has had a moment to want it.
In ornamental notation, an appoggiatura is an auxiliary note placed before a principal note, usually a step away. The characteristic long form falls on the beat and takes up part of the principal note’s written duration. In harmonic analysis, the same word usually describes an accented dissonance approached by leap and resolved by step. The dissonance may be written as an ordinary full-sized note. The two uses are related, and a single note can sometimes fit both. One tells a performer how to interpret an ornament. The other tells a listener or analyst how a melody moves through the harmony.
Where the small note falls
The Italian appoggiatura derives from appoggiare, “to lean” or “to support.” At the keyboard, the sense of leaning becomes clear when we listen to the hands together. The left hand already includes an E in its chord. The right hand arrives on F at the same moment, then moves to its own E. The ear hears the two notes as a single melodic motion, with its weight at the beginning and its release at the end. Holding F long enough for the harmony to register can give that motion shape even with an even touch.
In a score, the long appoggiatura often looks like a small note without a slash through its stem, set immediately to the left of the principal note. Its position on the page tells us which note comes first. To find its position in time, we need to read the ornament in relation to the beat. In the usual long form, the small note takes the beat and the principal note arrives later. For two players working from separate parts, that is a practical detail. It tells them which pitch in the melody sounds with the accompaniment.
The first example places that decision in the second beat of a bar of 2/4. In A, a small F precedes a written quarter-note E. In B, the same passage is written as it might be played, with an eighth note for F and an eighth note for E. The opening G remains a quarter note. The left hand, omitted from this first engraving, plays C–E–G at the beginning of beat two and holds it to the end of the bar. In the plain version, the right hand would play G and E as two quarter notes.
Tap beat two while listening to the two versions. The tap falls with E the first time and with F the second. You can try a third version at the piano by slipping F in just before the chord, so that E once again meets the accompaniment. The same pitches are present, yet the effect of F changes because it no longer coincides with the chord’s onset. The experiment separates two aspects of an ornament that are easy to confuse, its speed and its placement against the bass.
How eighteenth-century players read the duration
In 1753, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach devoted a section of his keyboard treatise to appoggiaturas. Leopold Mozart examined the same problem in his violin treatise of 1756. These writers addressed players of different instruments, but both had to explain what happened when a small note inherited the beginning of a beat from the larger note beside it. Their examples show how much the notation could leave to a player who already knew the conventions.
Half and two-thirds in practice
Bach gives one half as the customary share before a principal note divisible into two equal parts, and two thirds before one divisible into three. The fractions refer to the written value of the principal note. A quarter note gives us two eighth notes, one for each pitch. A dotted quarter contains three eighth notes. In the usual long realization, the appoggiatura takes the first two and the principal note receives the last. Leopold Mozart describes the corresponding divisions and pays particular attention to the way the player joins the second note to the first.
| Written principal note | Appoggiatura | Principal note as played |
|---|---|---|
| Quarter note | Eighth note | Eighth note |
| Dotted quarter note | Quarter note | Eighth note |
The second division brings the resolution quite late. The auxiliary pitch can feel like the one on which the phrase dwells, while the principal note becomes a brief release. In his example of the equal division, Leopold Mozart asks the violinist to join the principal note gently to its appoggiatura. At the keyboard, a slightly lighter touch on the resolution gives a comparable effect. The opening note may already have enough weight from its duration, its place on the beat, or its dissonance against the accompaniment.
When the accompaniment changes the answer
Bach also explains why the customary length can be unsuitable. A prolonged ornament may run into a new bass note and produce a succession of intervals that distorts the voice leading. In another phrase, giving the auxiliary too much time can obscure the very rhythmic figure the player needs to make clear. Length is therefore something to decide while listening to the other voices as well as reading the small note.
Try playing the melody with the bass alone. Listen for the pitch that meets each harmonic change and how late the principal note can arrive while leaving the next figure clear. A repeated phrase provides another kind of evidence. If the composer has written the same ornament out in full on its return, the second passage can help explain the first. The critical edition of C. P. E. Bach’s flute concertos gives a concrete example in the first movement of the Concerto Wq 169. The editor points to bars 44–45 for a short realization and to bars 70 and 72, where comparable long figures are written out in equal sixteenth notes.
What the slash can tell us
In modern notation, a small note with a slash through its stem usually indicates an acciaccatura, a very short grace note. The principal note keeps most of the duration and the listener’s attention is drawn quickly to it. A long appoggiatura gives the listener time to hear the auxiliary pitch as part of the harmony’s unfolding. The contrast is especially clear when the bass makes a fresh entry with the first of the two notes.
The slash gives a useful first indication. Exact placement before or on the beat depends on the style, the source and the phrase. Eighteenth-century writers also describe short appoggiaturas, and their terminology and notation do not always match the distinction familiar from modern editions. When a performance depends on the timing of a very small note, an edition’s commentary and a comparable passage elsewhere in the work can help decide which pitch should coincide with the bass.
When the dissonance is written out
In harmonic analysis, we begin with the chord and ask how the melody entered and left the dissonance. In the second example, middle C is a pickup before the first complete bar of 2/4. The melody leaps up a perfect fourth to F on the downbeat, at the same moment that the left hand plays a C major chord. F lies outside the chord. A beat later the melody descends by semitone to E, a chord tone, over the harmony that has been sounding all along.
Set this beside the ornament in the first example. There, the melody moves from G to F by step, and F is written as a small note. Here, F enters by leap from C at the strongest point in the bar and is written as a full quarter note. Both examples give us F–E over C major. The note before F, its place in the bar and the way it is written explain why the term appoggiatura is being used in different senses.
A suspension offers another comparison. Imagine F sounding over F major and being held while the accompaniment changes to C major. It can then resolve to the same E as in our examples. The dissonance arose because the chord changed under a pitch that was already sounding. In the second engraved example, F enters afresh, by leap, as the harmony sounds. Now try E–F–G, giving F the weaker position between the outer notes. Here F is a passing tone. The chord tells us that F is foreign to the harmony in all three situations. The melody’s route tells us what that F is doing.
From a sung syllable to an orchestral phrase
In a song, the extra pitch can give a syllable time to register. In Das Veilchen (“The Violet”), K. 476, Mozart sets a poem by Goethe. At bar 10 the voice sings the stressed syllable -bückt of gebückt, passing from a small G to F-sharp on that one syllable. The introduction to the songs volume of the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe includes this passage among the examples in which the long appoggiatura takes half the written value, with a gentle connection into the principal note. The word already has its own stress. Following the vocal line shows what the ornament can do with it.
An instrumentalist can shape a comparable inflection. A violinist can carry the two notes in one bow and ease the weight at the resolution. A pianist can shape the same relationship through duration, touch and the release of the first key. In an orchestra, the parts involved may belong to different players, and the effect depends on how the melodic line meets the bass. Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 offers a particularly clear example of what happens at that meeting point.
🎧 Listening to the appoggiaturas in Mozart’s Andante
The second movement of the Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, is in E-flat major. The successive string entries in its opening draw attention to the interplay of individual lines. Soon afterwards, in the passage isolated in Robert Hutchinson’s Example 10.4.3, the top line makes two closely related turns. First it falls to B natural against an A-flat major chord, then rises a semitone to C, the chord’s third. In the next figure it falls to A natural against an E-flat major chord with G in the bass, then rises to B-flat, the chord’s fifth. The dissonances are written out at full size. Both resolve upwards.
From 0:18 to 0:26 in this recording, listen first for the two small upward steps, B natural–C and A natural–B-flat. On a second hearing, follow the bass. Each new chord has already arrived while the melody is still on its dissonant pitch. Then start a little earlier and listen for the downward leap into each of those pitches. Hearing the approach and the resolution together brings the appoggiatura into focus.
Cologne New Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Volker Hartung. Listen from 0:18 · See the passage in notation.
📚 Further Reading
Bach is a good place to begin with the choices a player faces. Hutchinson’s examples then take the ear into the same territory from the perspective of harmony.
- C. P. E. Bach, Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, Part I, Chapter II, §2. Compare the customary divisions with the cases in which the accompaniment calls for a different length.
- Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, introduction to the songs volume, pp. XI–XIII. See how the editors apply period instructions to the words, rhythms and cadences of individual songs. The Das Veilchen score lets you locate -bückt in bar 10.
- Robert Hutchinson, Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom, §10.4. Short score examples for hearing the leap into the dissonance and the step away from it.
- Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, K. 550 · Analysis. Follow the form of the Andante and the exchanges between strings and winds within the larger work.
🔗 Related Terms
- Acciaccatura · In modern usage, a very short ornament, generally written with a slash through the stem of the small note.
- Suspension · A note carried over from the previous harmony that becomes dissonant as the chord changes and then resolves.
- Passing tone · A pitch that connects two different notes by step in the same direction.
- Legato · Playing with a connected touch can let the appoggiatura and its resolution register as a single motion.
🎼 Closing Reflection
The E in the plain version hardly asks for attention. In the second version we wait for it. Its pitch is unchanged, but the ear now hears it as the moment the phrase can move on.
📖 Bibliography & Sources
The two period treatises document the questions of length and execution. The song edition, the annotated extract of the Andante, and the recording support the discussion of the two passages separately.
- Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel. Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen. Part I, Berlin, 1753, Chapter II, §2. Translated by William J. Mitchell as Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments, W. W. Norton, 1949.
- Mozart, Leopold. Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule. Augsburg, 1756, Chapter IX, §§3–4.
- Kuijken, Barthold. Introduction to Flute Concertos I, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: The Complete Works, III/4.1.
- Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. “Appoggiatura,” Vocabolario Treccani, and “Acciaccatura,” Enciclopedia Italiana.
- Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Das Veilchen, K. 476, m. 10. Score edited by Luigi Cataldi, 2000. See also Ernst August Ballin, ed., Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, III/8, Lieder, 1963, introduction.
- Hutchinson, Robert. Music Theory for the 21st-Century Classroom, §10.4, “Appoggiatura,” Example 10.4.3, excerpt from Symphony K. 550, II. Andante.
- Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus. Symphony No. 40, K. 550, II. Andante. Cologne New Philharmonic Orchestra, Volker Hartung. JPK Musik, 2017.