Fioritura

Fioritura is a musical term describing florid melodic decoration added to a melody. Derived from the Italian word for "flowering" or "blooming," it denotes passages of elaborate, rapid notes that ornament the main line. The idea foregrounds virtuosity and expressivity, often through extended runs, arpeggios, scales, trills, turns, or coloratura-like figures.

Used mainly in Baroque and Classical repertoire for voice and keyboard, and occasionally for instruments, fioriture may be notated by composers as explicit written-out figures or left to performers as improvised embellishment within stylistic limits. In vocal music, it is closely associated with coloratura passages and cadenzas; in keyboard music, with virtuosic runs and arpeggio sequences that decorate a melodic line.

Fioritura is a form of ornamentation, though it typically implies longer, more extensive melodic elaboration than brief ornaments such as mordents or trills. Notation varies: some scores mark fioritura with the term itself or with small-note figures; others rely on performers' stylistic judgment.

The term remains common in musicology and performance practice to describe florid passages that expand the melodic line, and it is used in modern musical pedagogy to label certain virtuosic passages. The plural fioriture is used for multiple such passages.