From left to right, the symbols for piano, mezzo-piano, mezzo-forte, and forte.
In music, dynamics normally refers to the volume of a sound or note, but can also refer to every aspect of the execution of a given piece, either stylistic (staccato, legato etc.) or functional (velocity). The term is also applied to the written or printed musical notation used to indicate dynamics.
Contents
- 1 Relative loudness
- 1.1 Sudden changes
- 1.2 Gradual changes
- 2 Words indicating changes of dynamics
- 3 History
- 4 References
- 5 See also
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Relative loudness
Teacher. “And what does ff mean?”
Pupil (after mature deliberation). “Fump-Fump.”
Cartoon from Punch magazine October 6, 1920
The two basic dynamic indications in music are:
- p or piano, meaning “soft.”
- f or forte, meaning “loud” or “strong” also it can mean “deep”.
More subtle degrees of loudness or softness are indicated by:
- mp, standing for mezzo-piano, meaning “moderately soft” and
- mf, standing for mezzo-forte, meaning “moderately loud”.
Beyond f and p, there are also
- ff, standing for “fortissimo”, and meaning “very loud” and
- pp, standing for “pianissimo”, and meaning “very soft”.
To indicate even more extreme degrees of intensity, more ps or fs are added as required. fff and ppp are found in sheet music quite frequently. No standard names for fff and ppp exist, but musicians have invented a variety of neologisms for these designations, including fortississimo/pianississimo, forte fortissimo/piano pianissimo, and more simply triple forte/triple piano or molto fortissimo/molto pianissimo (although in Italian the last expression is not correct). ppp has also been designated “pianissimo possibile”.
Note Velocity in terms of Dynamic’s relative to Logic Pro 8 and other digital music software.
A few pieces contain dynamic designations with more than three fs (sometimes called “fortondoando”) or ps. The Norman Dello Joio Suite for Piano ends with a crescendo to a ffff, and Tchaikovsky indicated a bassoon solo pppppp in his Pathétique symphony and ffff in passages of his 1812 Overture and the 2nd movement of his 5th symphony. ffff is also found in a prelude by Rachmaninoff, op.3-2. Shostakovich even went as loud as fffff in his fourth symphony. Gustav Mahler, in the third movement of his Seventh Symphony, gives the violins a marking of fffff, along with a footnote directing ‘pluck so hard that the strings hit the wood.’ On another extreme, Carl Nielsen, in the second movement of his Symphony No. 5, marked a passage for woodwinds a diminuendo to ppppp. Another more extreme dynamic is in György Ligeti’s Devil’s Staircase Etude, which has at one point a ffffff and progresses to a fffffff.
Dynamic indications are relative, not absolute. mp does not indicate an exact level of volume, it merely indicates that music in a passage so marked should be a little louder than p and a little quieter than mf. Interpretations of dynamic levels are left mostly to the performer; in the Barber Piano Nocturne, a phrase beginning pp is followed by a diminuendo leading to a mp marking. Another instance of performer’s-discretion in this piece occurs when the left hand is shown to crescendo to a f, and then immediately after marked p while the right hand plays the melody f. It has been speculated that this is used simply to remind the performer to keep the melody louder than the harmonic line in the left hand. For some music notation programs, there might be default MIDI key velocity values associated with these indications, but more sophisticated programs allow users to change these as needed.
Sudden changes
Sforzando notation
Sforzando (or sforzato), indicates a strong, sudden accent and is abbreviated as sf, sfz or fz. The notation fp (or sfp) indicates a sforzando followed immediately by piano. One particularly noteworthy use of this dynamic is in the second movement of Joseph Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. Rinforzando, rfz (literally “reinforcing”) indicates that several notes, or a short phrase, are to be emphasized.
Gradual changes
In addition, there are words used to indicate gradual changes in volume. The two most common are crescendo, sometimes abbreviated to cresc., meaning “get gradually louder”; and decrescendo or diminuendo, sometimes abbreviated to decresc. and dim. respectively, meaning “get gradually softer”. Signs sometimes referred to as “hairpins” are also used to stand for these words (See image). If the lines are joined at the left, then the indication is to get louder; if they join at the right, the indication is to get softer. The following notation indicates music starting moderately loud, then becoming gradually louder and then gradually quieter.
Hairpins are usually written below the staff, but are sometimes found above, especially in music for singers or in music with multiple melody lines being played by a single performer. They tend to be used for dynamic changes over a relatively short space of time, while cresc., decresc. and dim. are generally used for dynamic changes over a longer period. For long stretches, dashes are used to extend the words so that it is clear over what time the event should occur. It is not necessary to draw dynamic marks over more than a few bars, whereas word directions can remain in force for pages if necessary.
For quicker changes in dynamics, molto cresc. and molto dim. are often used, where the molto means a lot. Similarly, for slow changes poco a poco cresc. or cresc. poco a poco and poco a poco dim. or dim. poco a poco are used, where poco a poco translates as bit by bit.
Words indicating changes of dynamics
- al niente: to be nothing
- calando: becoming smaller
- crescendo: becoming louder
- decrescendo or diminuendo: becoming softer
- perdendo or perdendosi: losing volume, fading into nothing, dying away
- morendo: dying away
- marcato: stressed, pronounced
- sotto voce: soft, subtle
- in rilievo: indicates that a particular instrument is to play slightly louder than the others so as to stand out (be “in relief”) over the ensemble
History
The Renaissance composer Giovanni Gabrieli was one of the first to indicate dynamics in music notation, but dynamics were used sparingly by composers until the late 18th century. Bach used the terms piano, più piano, and pianissimo (written out as words), and in some cases it may be that ppp was considered to mean pianissimo in this period.
During the Baroque period, the use of terraced dynamics was common. This meant a sudden change from full to soft, with no crescendo or decrescendo. The terraced dynamic was used for musical effect, to create an echo effect: a passage is played forte, then repeated piano as an echo. However, a major reason for the use of terraced dynamics is that the harpsichord, which was the principal keyboard instrument of the period, was incapable of gradations of volume. The harpsichord can be played either loud or soft, but not in between.
The fact that the harpsichord could play only terraced dynamics, and the fact that composers of the period did not mark gradations of dynamics in their scores, has led to the “somewhat misleading suggestion that baroque dynamics are ‘terraced dynamics’,” writes Robert Donington (Donington, p. 33). In fact, baroque musicians constantly varied dynamics. “Light and shade must be constantly introduced… by the incessant interchange of loud and soft,” wrote Johann Joachim Quantz in 1752 (quoted in Donington, p. 32).
In the Romantic period, composers greatly expanded the vocabulary for describing dynamic changes in their scores. Where Haydn and Mozart specified six levels (pp to ff), Beethoven used also ppp and fff (the latter less frequently), and Brahms used a range of terms to describe the dynamics he wanted. In the slow movement of the trio for violin, waldhorn and piano (Opus 40), he uses the expressions ppp, molto piano, and quasi niente to express different qualities of quiet.
References
Robert Donington, Baroque Music (1982) WW Norton, ISBN 0-393-30052-8
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