The answer is ARPEGGIO, eight letters. A chord is normally sounded all at once, and an arpeggio takes those same notes and lays them out one behind another in time. Eight squares carrying four vowels makes it long-entry material rather than ordinary filler.
The harp hiding inside the word
Arpeggio comes from the Italian arpeggiare, to play the harp, which is built on arpa. The connection is mechanical rather than poetic. A harpist releases strings one finger at a time, so spreading the notes of a chord is what the instrument does naturally, and sounding all of them at a single instant is the awkward maneuver. Keyboard and guitar writing borrowed both the gesture and the Italian label.
What the notation looks like on the page
Composers indicate it two ways. Either the notes are written out one by one as a running figure, or they are stacked into an ordinary chord with a wavy vertical line drawn down its left side. That squiggle instructs the player to roll the chord rather than strike it, starting from the lowest note and traveling upward, unless an arrowhead at one end reverses the direction. Guitarists reach the same result by picking the strings in sequence instead of strumming across them.
Why accompaniment runs on broken chords
Take a single harmony, spread it over several beats, and you get movement without changing the harmony at all. That trick built a great deal of keyboard music. The best known version is the Alberti bass, named for the eighteenth century keyboard player Domenico Alberti, in which the left hand states a chord in a fixed order of lowest note, highest note, middle note, highest note, over and over. Anyone who has sat through early piano lessons has played it.
There is a practice room reason too. Scales teach a player the notes belonging to a key, and arpeggios teach the notes belonging to a chord, so method books drill the two side by side from the first year onward. That is why setters clue this entry through piano exercise as readily as through harmony, and why the word is familiar to people who gave up lessons decades ago.
The shorter answers and when they win
| Letters | Answer | Situation |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | ROLLS | Wording describes rolling the chord |
| 6 | SPREAD | British grids, spread chord |
| 8 | ARPEGGIO | The standard entry |
| 9 | ARPEGGIOS | Plural wording, plural entry |
The Italian terms that travel with it
Musical vocabulary hands constructors a deep supply of vowel-heavy Italian, and a small set recurs constantly. LEGATO at six means smoothly joined, TREMOLO at seven is the rapid repetition of one note, STACCATO at eight means clipped and detached, and GLISSANDO at nine is a slide across pitches. Every one of them gets clued through a plain English paraphrase rather than through notation, so you are matching a definition to a length.
ARPEGGIO is the longest of the everyday members of that family, which is why it tends to arrive as a themed entry or a long across rather than as incidental fill. If you have eight blanks and a musical definition, start there.
Frequently asked questions
What is the answer to the broken chord crossword clue?
ARPEGGIO, eight letters, in almost every grid. An arpeggio sounds the notes of a chord one after another instead of together, which is literally what breaking a chord means. Shorter slots take ROLLS at five or SPREAD at six, both describing the same gesture.
Where does the word arpeggio come from?
From the Italian verb arpeggiare, to play the harp, built on arpa. Plucking a harp means releasing strings one finger at a time, so spreading a chord is the instrument's natural motion and sounding four notes at one instant is the harder thing to do.
How is a broken chord written in sheet music?
Two ways. The composer either writes the notes out in sequence, or stacks them as a normal chord and draws a wavy vertical line down the left side. That squiggle tells the player to roll the chord, from the bottom note upward unless an arrow points the other way.
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