Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Pizzicato |
PizzicatoAdjective1. (of instruments in the violin family) to be plucked with the finger. Adverb1. (music) with a light plucking staccato sound. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "pizzicato" was first used: 1845. (references) |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Pizzicato is a method of playing an orchestral string instrument. Instead of using the bow, the performer plucks the desired string with their finger. This produces a very different sound, short and rapid rather than sustained.
In jazz, and some forms of popular music, pizzicato is the usual way to play the double bass. In classical music, however, string instruments are most usually played with the bow, and composers give specific indications to play pizzicato where required. There are some pieces in classical music which are played entirely pizzicato, such as the second movement of Benjamin Britten's Simple Symphony, or the fourth movement of Bela Bartok's String Quartet No. 4.
The first known use of pizzicato in classical music is in Claudio Monteverdi's Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (around 1638), in which the players are instructed to use two fingers of their right hand to pluck the strings. Later, in 1756, Leopold Mozart in his Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule instructs the player to use the index finger of the right hand. This has remained the most usual way to execute a pizzicato, though sometimes the middle finger is used. The bow is held in the hand at the same time unless there is enough time to put it down and pick it up again between bowed passages.
If a violinist or violist has to play pizzicato for a long period of time, they may put down their bow, hold the instrument in the "banjo position" (resting horizonally on the lap), and pluck the strings with the thumb of the right hand. This technique is rarely used, usually in movements which are pizzicato throughout.
It is also possible to execute a pizzicato with a finger of the left hand (the hand that normally stops the strings). This allows pizzicati in places where there would not normally be time to bring the right hand from or to the bowing position. This technique is quite rarely called for, but was used as a special effect by Niccolo Paganini in his 24 Caprices.
Johannes Brahms asks for slurred pizzicati in his Cello Sonata No. 2. This is achieved by playing one note, and then stopping a new note on the same string without plucking the string again. This technique is not much used.
A further variation is a particularly strong pizzicato where the string rebounds off the finger-board of the instrument. This is sometimes known as the Bartok pizzicato, after one of the first composers to use it extensively. Bartok also made use of pizzicato glissandi, executed by plucking a note and then sliding the stopping finger up or down the string. This technique can be heard in his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, for example.
In music notation, a composer will normally indicate the performer should use pizzicato with the abbreviation pizz. A return to bowing is indicated by the Italian term arco. A left hand pizzicato is usually indicated by writing a small cross above the note, and a Bartok pizzicato is often indicated by a circle with a small vertical line through the top of it above the note in question.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Pizzicato."
Crosswords: Pizzicato |
| Non-English Usage: "Pizzicato" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. Hungarian (pizzicato), Italian (pizzicato), Romanian (pizzicato), Spanish (pizzicato), Swedish (pizzicato), Turkish (pizzicato). |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.
| Domain | Title |
Books | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Play | Caption | Play | Caption |
 | Piano feature with an accompaniment of strings bowed and pizzicato. . | | Light pizzicato and ambient sounds creating a pleasant mood. |
| Pizzicato guitar melody playing in a major Hawaiian-sounding tonal area. | | French horn and pizzicato strings playing a very short film style excerpt. |
| A single low string pizzicato. | | A synthesized muted pizzicato guitar tone. |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| "Pizzicato" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 94.44% of the time. "Pizzicato" is used about 18 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 94.44% | 17 | 85,106 |
| Noun (proper) | 5.56% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 18 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
pizzicato five | 93 |
pizzicato | 32 |
pizzicato 5 | 27 |
pizzicato five lyrics | 7 |
pizza pizzicato | 3 |
five midi pizzicato | 3 |
pizzicato five discography | 2 |
pizzicato restaurant | 2 |
pizzicato polka | 2 |
gourmet pizza pizzicato | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "pizzicato"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Bulgarian | пицикато. (various references) | |
Chinese | '奏 . (various references) | |
German | Pizzikato. (various references) | |
Greek | τσιμπητά. (various references) | |
Hungarian | pizzicato. (various references) | |
Italian | pizzicato. (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | "ストン輸送 (ice axe, period, periodic, PHS portable phone, piccolo, pick, picking, pickoff play, pickup service, pilaf, pile, Pilgrim Fathers, pill, pilling, pipette, piranha, pit, pit stop, pitch, pitcher, pitcher's mound, pitching, pitching machine, pitchout, Pithecanthropus erectus, pivot, pizza, Pulitzer, pure, pure malt, puree, purist, Puritan, pyramid, pyramid selling, pyrine, shuttle, splashing sound, stilt). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | "チカート . (various references) | |
Pig Latin | izzicatopay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | pizicato. (various references) | |
Romanian | pizzicato. (various references) | |
Russian | пиццикато. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | picikato. (various references) | |
Spanish | pizzicato. (various references) | |
Swedish | pizzicato. (various references) | |
Turkish | pizzicato, parmakla çekilme. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | піцикато. (various references) | |
Vietnamese | đoạn nhạc bật. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
| Language | Period | Translations |
| Old Italian | 700-1500 | pizzo. (various references) |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references. | ||
| Words rhyming with "pizzicato" (pronounced 'Piz`zi*ca"to'): Agitato, Allegretto, Anito, Araguato, Arnatto, Assiento, Avigato, Ayuntamiento, Bassetto, Basto, Braziletto, Busto, Canoncito, Canto, Carapato, Castrato, Cavetto, Cento, Cinquecento, Concerto, Concetto, Contrafagetto, Cornuto, Corvetto, Couranto, Devoto, Ferretto, Flauto, Fugato, Giusto, graffito, grotto, gusto, impasto, inamorato, junto, larghetto, legato, lento, libretto, lotto, manifesto, Manto, Marcato, memento, Misurato, moderato, molto, mosquito, Moto. (additional references) |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-c-i-i-o-p-t-z-z" | |
-3 letters: atopic, azotic. | |
-4 letters: azoic, coapt, coati, optic, patio, picot, pizza, topaz, topic, zizit. | |
-5 letters: atop, capo, ciao, coat, iota, otic, pact, pica, pita, taco, tipi, topi, ziti, zoic. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Commercial 4. Sounds | 5. Usage Frequency 6. Expressions: Internet 7. Translations: Modern 8. Translations: Ancient | 9. Rhymes 10. Anagrams 11. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
