IT senza sordino mute core term Support my free tools
- Abbreviation
- senza sord.
How is senza sordino played?
Remove the performance mute from the bridge before the unmuted entry, or use senza sordino or senza sord. to confirm that the passage is unmuted. Slide-on designs can move quickly, but the player still needs a free hand, practical time and, where necessary, musical cover. In Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, the muted fugue expands toward its first-movement climax and the mutes are removed in stages around that point before the music settles over the celesta. Continue unmuted until another explicit mute instruction.
How does senza sordino sound?
The full brightness returns: the upper partials and the sheen come back, the tone regains its edge and projection, and the section steps forward out of the muted distance into the room.
In context
Italian senza sordino on strings means remove the bridge mute or establish the unmuted state; Musicca, Stone and Hugill directly support senza sord. It corresponds functionally to German ohne Dämpfer and French sans sourdine in string context and reverses con sordino, but local editions may instead use another explicit return. Restored resonance and upper-partial balance can sound clearer or more present without guaranteeing a louder, brighter or more brilliant result; Bartók’s first-movement removal is a documented score example.
Music theory and score context
See also
- Mute (music) — Wikipedia
- Harmonic Spectrum of Muted Strings — Orchestration Online
- Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta — Wikipedia
- Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Sz.106 — IMSLP
- Musicca — senza sordino
- Kurt Stone — Music Notation in the Twentieth Century
- Andrew Hugill — The Orchestra: A User’s Manual, violin mutes
- Vienna Symphonic Library Academy — Violin: Con sordino
- Orchestration Online — Strings: Mute Changes
- Béla Bartók — Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, published score
- Bard College TŌN — Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta