Anticipations, Escape Tones, and Appoggiaturas

Think of a nonchord tone as a small detour off the chord tone it is really headed toward. The detour has two halves: how the voice gets to the dissonant note, and how it gets away from it. An anticipation steps or leaps to a note early, one that belongs to the next chord, then just sits there while the harmony catches up to it on the next beat; it arrives unaccented, before its time. An escape tone leaves a chord tone by step, then leaps away in the opposite direction to the next chord tone, so it departs unaccented, almost sneaking off. An appoggiatura does the opposite of an escape tone: it arrives by leap, lands hard on an accented beat as a dissonance, and then resolves by step, usually downward, into a chord tone. That leap-in, step-out shape, combined with its accented placement, is what gives the appoggiatura its leaning, almost sighing character, which is exactly why a singer who lands on it feels like they got there early but still sound musical: the ear hears tension that insists on resolving.

The singer in the opening question is not really early. The dissonant leap-tone is doing its job: it is supposed to feel unsettled until it steps down to the chord tone underneath it, so the resolution confirms what the ear expected all along.

These three sit alongside passing tones, neighbor tones, and suspensions as the full toolkit of melodic embellishment. What separates them from suspensions matters most: a suspension is also an accented dissonance that resolves down by step, but it is prepared and approached by common tone or step from the previous chord, not by leap. Since accent and resolution alone cannot distinguish an appoggiatura from a suspension, the approach is the deciding test every time.