ORNAMENTATION. — Ornaments or musical flourishes (which the French call agréments, broderies; the Germans Verzierungen, Manieren, Ornamente; the English graces) are melodic figures superimposed upon the principal note of a melody and serve to grace it, embellish it, and render it more pleasing. Secondly, the vast proliferation of ornamentation arose from the fact that ancient instruments—on which, above all, its technique developed—were imperfect, and these melodic figures that adorned the melody also served as necessary connections between the notes.
In Gregorian chant, all forms of ornamentation include the various liquescent neumes, from the cephalicus to the oriscus; for these, see the table opposite.
Similar formulas must also have existed in Greco-Roman music, with which Gregorian chant shares many points of contact.
It may therefore be supposed that these melodic procedures were present in the most ancient and diverse epochs of music and, indeed, were born with music itself. The musicians of the troubadour era of the 12th and 13th centuries were not ignorant of them.
2. — ENCYCLOPEDIA CATHOLICA. — I.
| NAME | FIGURE | MODERN NOTATION |
| Cephalicus | P | |
| Epiphonus | C | |
| Ancus | P | |
| Liquescent Torculus | P | |
| Liquescent Orrectus | N | |
| Quilisma | P | |
| Strophic | P | |
| Pressus | P | |
| Oriscus | P | |
(drawing: Enc. Catt.)
ORNAMENTATION — Liquescent neumes as they appear in monastic manuscripts and in modern transcription.
They did not ignore them. In the 14th century, Francesco Landini, the Blind Organist, and his contemporaries achieved great spontaneity and often elegance in the art of embellishing the melody, and in their music one can easily discern various forms of ornamentation such as the gruppetto, the trill, etc. The style of classical polyphony forbade excessive ornamentation of the melody, so the art of ornamentation was banned in this type of music. Instead, it reappeared in the 15th and 16th centuries with the so-called diminutions: singers in choral practice embellished their parts with various ornaments and roulades of every kind, contributing no little to the development of vocal technique and art.
The development of vocal and instrumental style, which in the 17th century found its greatest exponents respectively in Claudio Monteverdi and Girolamo Frescobaldi, gave great impetus to the development of the art of ornamentation. The prefaces to *Le nuove musiche*, a collection of madrigals and arias by Caccini, and *Il Transilvano*, a dialogue on the true manner of playing organs and keyboard instruments by Diruta, also gave rise to the theory of this art. Although the two works pertain to different currents—one concerning the art of singing and the other the art of playing instruments—they are in agreement regarding the execution of the principal forms of ornamentation: trills (tremolos, small tremolos) and groppi (groups). Other contemporary authors, such as E. De’ Cavalieri, M. Praetorius, and Mersenne, mention some ornaments that later fell into disuse, such as the monachina, the zimbelo, the ribattuta di gola, the tirata, the cascata, and the accento. At this time, the first signs of abbreviation in ornamentation began to appear, which soon multiplied considerably. It seems that Frescobaldi was not acquainted with them or at least did not use any abbreviations except very rarely. Two distinct schools emerged in their use: the French and the Italo-German. French composers adorned their compositions with every kind of ornament, being very diligent in indicating precisely the sign and the exact point where the ornament was to be applied; whereas the authors of the Italo-German school were far less meticulous in notation but much more restrained in their use.
Almost all left explanatory tables of the most frequently used abbreviations: C. Simpson (1659) listed thirteen; M. Locke in *Melothesia* (1673) listed five; H. Purcell (1658–95) listed nine; M. Mace in *Music’s Monument* listed fifteen. The subject was treated more extensively by F. Couperin in *L’Art de toucher le clavecin* (1717), and J. S. Bach himself left a table—albeit incomplete—in the *Klavier-Büchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach*, begun in Cöthen on January 22, 1720, of the ornaments he most frequently used.
Throughout this period of ancient ornamentation, ornaments were like something superimposed upon the melody, not always intimately connected with the depth of musical thought, and their principal purpose was to adorn the often simple and bare melodic substrate. With the invention of the piano, an instrument of powerful sonority in which notes can also be rigorously connected to one another, that tangle of ornaments became superfluous and an impediment to the very naturalness and spontaneity of musical thought, as well as difficult and harmful in performance. Gradually, all ornaments that did not contribute real expressive value fell into disuse, and in modern musical language only the appoggiatura, the mordent, the trill, the gruppetto, and a few others remained. In this period of modern ornamentation, notes of ornamentation are often written as real notes of a specific value: a circumstance that has contributed, at least in part, to the survival of only those ornaments that are a living expression and an integral part of musical thought.
**ABUNDANCE OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL STATE, CONGREGATION OF: V. CONGREGAZIONI ROMANE, SACRE.**