Arco
With the bow — cancelling pizzicato
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Arco is the string instruction: play with the bow. Its most common job is to cancel a preceding pizzicato — the score writes pizz., then arco, and the player switches from plucking back to bowing.
The difference is not only volume: pizzicato is a decaying point, arco a sustainable line. Arco is not just "back to normal": returning from pizzicato means rebuilding bow weight and speed in the right hand and re-preparing the left hand. Listen to arco for whether the line comes back at once.
Read deeper → pizzicato
Sources
- arco 的记谱含义与弦乐演奏，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Arco"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.