Al niente
To fade away into nothing.
What it means
Al niente means “to nothing” and calls for a note or a passage to be drawn back so far that it vanishes at the threshold of hearing. What is meant is not a breaking off but an extinguishing: the sound should dissolve without an end becoming audible.
The instruction thereby goes beyond an ordinary decrescendo, which merely calls for softer and usually ends at piano or pianissimo. The opposite direction is called dal niente, “from nothing”: the sound arises imperceptibly out of the silence.
Related are morendo, smorzando and perdendosi, which likewise mean an extinguishing but as a rule also draw back the tempo. Al niente concerns the dynamics alone.
In the notation
The marking stands in italics at the end of a decrescendo hairpin or above the staff. A sign of its own is also common: a decrescendo hairpin ending in a small circle, or the figure 0 at the end of the hairpin. Both notations mean the same thing. With dal niente the sign stands correspondingly at the beginning of a crescendo hairpin.
Musical use
The marking stands at the end of movements and sections that are to fade away, and at sustained notes that withdraw into silence. It is especially widespread in the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, in which the boundary between sound and silence is deliberately shaped. In the orchestral music of the late nineteenth century corresponding turns are also found, there usually with words instead of signs.
It often stands with a hairpin that ends in a small circle.
Performance practice
Space the drawing-back across the whole stretch and keep reserve to the very last; the most common weakness is being at the minimum too early. See that the note carries even at the extreme of quiet and that the intonation stays stable — both are first to come into danger. For wind players a supported, calm airstream helps, for string players a slow bow near the fingerboard. And plan the end: the last audible moment should not be perceived as a stopping.