IT forte-piano articulation core term Support my free tools
loud, then immediately soft; the standard compound dynamic form is fp
Music symbols
- Abbreviation
- fp
How is forte-piano played?
Begin the note, chord or gesture forte and reduce immediately to piano. The marking creates a forceful initial impact followed by sudden withdrawal within the same sustained event or immediate continuation; on naturally decaying instruments the contrast may be heard chiefly in the attack. Dynamic levels are relative to context rather than fixed decibels. Do not confuse the hyphenated instruction or fp with the fortepiano keyboard instrument, and do not infer the separate order pf. The convention is common in Classical and later scoring but is not tied to one composer.
How does forte-piano sound?
A bright accented attack that collapses immediately into quietness, leaving the following notes hushed.
In context
Treccani directly identifies fp as the musical abbreviation of forte-piano; Larousse and the Académie française independently give the same form and describe the immediate loud-to-soft change. The evidence supports fp as a conventional compound dynamic, not as a word abbreviation transferred from an equivalent term.