With all due respect, I do not know what this word means and I don't care.
appoggiatura means the grace note which takes up the time of the main note, it can take up to half of the value of the main note that follows.accaciatura is another kind of grace note that takes up the time value of the previous note, and is played very short... often has a slash across the note.
That is helpful, but why do composers use them in their works? How are they different from the corresponding 8th,16th,32nd, etc note?
What I'm refering to is the grace-note like notes played on the beat....
I have always played them just before the beat.
I believe it is used to more clearly define the harmony. Eg: The appoggiatura is a non-chord note. Similar to abell88's example.
I actually have an easy question and a hard one.First the easy one. Is there an easier word for appoggiatura? I would try calling them grace notes, but I know I'd run into people in this forum and elsewhere who would snap at me and tell me they are two entirely different things My more serious question is, what makes an appoggiatura note different from the same note written out as a sixteenth/32nd/triplet or whatever? What significance does an appoggiatura have that a simple 16th note does not? Besides being easier to write out on a page, why do composers use them instead of regular notes? I know many of them are used ornamentally, such as in Bach and friends, but I've read some composers, Chopin for example, used them in non-ornamental ways (btw, I'm currently learning Chopin's Waltz in A minor). Another usage which confuses me in Mozart's Alla Turca. I'm guessing in this case it has to do with the fact that the start of each phrase is a non-chord tone.Someone teach me something interesting about these crazy, impossible to spell notes!