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How is cupo played?
The performer darkens the sound: weightier, less brilliant, with covered timbre, restrained vibrato, and emphasis on lower or shadowed registers. Composers add cupo to specify the colour and mood of a passage rather than its speed, signalling something grave, brooding, or oppressive. It is a timbral and expressive instruction, often reinforced by low tessitura, muted brass, or dense low-string writing. Standard dictionaries gloss it as 'dark, sombre, morose' or 'gloomy, deep, dark', and it belongs to the family of Italian darkness words alongside oscuro.
How does cupo sound?
A heavy, shadowed, gloomy tone with little brightness or sheen.
In context
Dolmetsch defines cupo as '(Italian) dark, sombre, morose'; the Musicca dictionary gives 'gloomy, deep, dark'. It is a generic expressive/timbral marking not associated with any single composer, so none is attributed.