Later when the lovers, each ravaged by war, are reunited at last, they greet each other in a simple pianissimo, like two stunned sparrows.
Still, with her luminous singing, beautiful pianissimo high notes and unforced power, she was a noble, elegant Elisabeth.
The Venetian Giovanni Gabrieli (1556?–?1612) introduced the words piano (soft) and forte (loud) into his scores; they became the basis of a system running from pianissimo (pp) to fortissimo ( ff ), with softer and louder extensions possible.
The intimate pianissimo control of the singing of Cecilia Bartoli – recorded Vivaldi – adds its own layer of gorgeousness, to the extent that you almost decline to breathe, for fear of breaking its spell.
In the chill arc of Bartok's Fourth String Quartet, the opening of the central movement is a pin-drop pianissimo.
But its cameo is magical, fragile: while the left hand plays an aimless melody, the right hand uses the board to produce giant pianissimo clusters — ghostly commentaries, chords a human hand could never stretch.
But the version we now know — with its sure-footed, pitch-perfect opening, its forte-piano drop down to a pianissimo on the third line, its jazzy swagger as she takes the curve at the bottom of the song — is ninety per cent what she sang on that original take, only seconds after hearing the arrangement for the first time.
Mahler generated chills by the dozen: the pianissimo, misterioso entry of the chorus in the "Resurrection"; the huge orchestral chord that blazes forth in the spacious slow movement of the Fourth; the "hammer-blow" percussion in the finale of the Sixth, which crushes hopes for a major-key resolution.
When I turn slightly and glare at you to indicate that what you're doing is really not O.K., bring the volume back down to pianissimo, so that I question my sanity and wonder if anyone was even chewing gum in the first place.
When Beethoven began his Ninth Symphony with ten bars of otherworldly pianissimo, he was defying the norms of his time, essentially imagining a new world in which the audience would await the music in an expectant hush.
She sang with warmth, beautifully earthy colorings and captivating pianissimo high notes".
