Arpeggio

What it means

In an arpeggio the notes of a chord are struck not simultaneously but rapidly one after another, as a rule from bottom to top. The name comes from arpa, “harp”, and points to the manner of playing that is self-evident for that instrument. The struck notes are held, so that at the end the whole chord sounds.

The arpeggio as an ornament is to be distinguished from chord breaking as a textural technique. As an ornament it is a way of executing a notated chord; as a textural technique the broken notes are written out and form an accompaniment figure of their own — one then speaks rather of figuration.

The speed is not fixed. It ranges from a barely perceptible drawing-apart to a distinctly played-out upward run.

In the notation

The arpeggio is indicated by a vertical wavy line before the chord. An arrow at its end gives the direction when the chord is to be broken from top to bottom; without an arrow the upward direction holds. In piano music the line can reach across both staves, calling for a break across both hands; separate lines mean that each hand breaks for itself.

Musical use

Broken chords produce fullness and softness. On plucked instruments and the harp they are the natural manner of playing; on keyboard instruments they serve to make chords seem less hard and to make widely spanned grips executable at all. In the performance practice of the Baroque and the Viennese Classicism, unmarked chords too were frequently broken; in Romanticism the arpeggio belongs to the sound of the piano.

Performance practice

See that the top note — usually the melody note — lies exactly on the beat, unless the context suggests otherwise; the chord then begins a little earlier. Keep the break even and hold all the notes. Match the speed to the character: in calm movements the arpeggio may take time, in energetic ones it stays terse. And with piano music check whether the wavy line runs through or is separate.