Con sordino
Play with the mute on — less volume, a more distant colour
Related
Con sordino tells the player to fit the mute before playing, written con sord., and cancelled by senza sordino. Strings clamp a rubber or wooden mute to the bridge; brass players put one into the bell. It damps part of the vibration, making the sound lighter, thinner and more distant.
It is not merely a volume switch: string tone loses its gloss and the attack dulls, brass may turn dark or biting, and a mute can affect intonation and response, so the player must readjust. The usual mistake is to hear con sordino as only "quieter": it is first a colour and a sense of distance; in piano scores con sordino sometimes means the soft pedal, a completely different device. Nor is it the same as sul tasto, which adds nothing to the instrument.
Sources
- con sordino 的用法与音色变化，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Mute"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.