Lesson 43: Baroque Adagio Movement and Ornamentation

Play a Baroque adagio with a singing line and sustained affect.
Add at least one period-appropriate improvised ornament per phrase — appoggiatura, trill, or turn — without disrupting the underlying pulse.

Lesson 35 — Baroque style and affect.
Lesson 27 — trills.

Adagio movement structure.
Slow-movement ornamentation.
Affect in slow tempo.

A Baroque adagio is a sketch. The performer fills it in.

The Baroque slow movement, as written, is often a skeleton. The composer's expectation was that the performer would add ornamentation — appoggiature, trills, turns, but also full diminution (breaking a long note into a flourish of smaller notes). The unornamented page is not the music; the music is what the performer makes of it. This lesson asks you to play one adagio twice: once as written, once with your own ornamentation.

The unadorned line

A short adagio melody, written plain. Play it through with a singing tone and no added ornaments.

Diminution — filling in

The same line, with each long note broken into smaller motion. The long A is now a turn; the half notes are now passing figures; the leap of a fifth becomes a flourish of stepwise motion.

Principles

Ornament inside the harmony, not against it. Stepwise motion is safe; chromatic dissonance is risky.
Save the most elaborate ornamentation for cadences and long notes.
Less is more. A movement covered in sixteenths is busy, not expressive.
Listen to recordings. The early-music recording tradition has worked out what tastes good and what does not.

Now play these

Handel: Sonata in G minor, HWV 360 (Andante): The most ornament-friendly slow movement in the library.
Handel: Sonata in C major, HWV 365 (Larghetto): A graceful larghetto inviting moderate ornamentation.
Vivaldi: Concerto RV 443 (Largo): The famous Vivaldi adagio. Period recordings vary widely — experiment.

When you can play a Baroque adagio twice in succession with two different ornamentations, both convincing, move on to Lesson 44.