A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Pianissimo

PIANISSIMO, 'very softly.' This direction, which on all ordinary occasions is expressed by pp, is sometimes, but not very often, written in full—as a rule, to emphasize the fact of its presence in cases where it would least be expected. Beethoven often uses the full direction simultaneously with the abbreviation, as in the 10th Variation of the 33 on a valse by Diabelli, op. 120, in which variation may also be found an instance of one of his chief characteristics, the sudden leap from ff to pp in the 3ist bar. Another striking instance of both these uses is in the Scherzo of the Eroica Symphony, where the pianissimo is insisted on, not only at the beginning of the movement, but on almost every page of the score until the crescendo (only for one bar) up to fortissimo, after 27 bars of which there is a sudden piano which is used again frequently throughout the rest of the movement. Since Beethoven's time, the practice has become very common of using ppp, for what Weber in the beginning of the overture to Oberon calls 'Il tutto pianissimo possibile.' It is used notably by Berlioz in the 'Damnation de Faust,' just before the 'Danse des Sylphes,' and in the middle of it, where the first subject is resumed. He even goes so far as to use the sign pppp for the last two notes of the clarinets at the end of the dance. Verdi, in his Requiem, has gone even farther, and at one point uses ppppp.

[ J. A. F. M. ]