Embellishment
French for ornament.
What it means
Embellissement means “embellishment” and is the French designation for an ornament. What is meant are the small figures that adorn a melody: trills, appoggiaturas, mordents, slides, and the like.
In French music of the Baroque the term agrément is used with the same meaning and is more usual there. The German equivalent is Manier, the Italian ornamento. All these words designate the same subject, but the practices behind them differ: the French tradition works with a fixed stock of exactly defined signs, the Italian more strongly with freely invented embellishments.
The term thus stands for a conception according to which ornamentation is not an arbitrary addition but belongs to the work.
In the notation
Ornaments are indicated by signs of their own above or beside the notes, in the French tradition by hooks, loops, and small strokes. Their meaning is not self-evident; composers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries therefore prefaced tables that explain each sign in written-out form. Editions of early music print these tables as well.
Musical use
In French harpsichord and lute music, the ornaments shape the sound substantially. They emphasize dissonances, articulate the melody, and prolong notes on instruments whose sound decays quickly. In vocal music and chamber music of that time too, they are part of the craft of performance. In later periods the fixed system of signs recedes, and ornaments are increasingly written out.
The French word designates the art of ornamentation of French Baroque music, which was exactly regulated by fixed signs and tables. Unlike in Italy, where much was improvised, French composers largely wrote out the ornaments.
Performance practice
Look up the signs in the table of the respective edition before you execute them — the same signs mean something different in other traditions. Execute ornaments at the tempo of the piece and treat them as part of the melody. Take care that the main note keeps its position. And add your own embellishments only where the style expects them.