Fortissimo

The loud side of the scale

The building block Dynamics orders the basic levels from soft to loud: pianissimo, piano, mezzopiano, mezzoforte, forte and fortissimo. Fortissimo sits at the very top. The levels, it says there, are no exact measurements but points of reference; what matters is the relationship to one another, not the absolute level.

The symbol library also lists fortississimo (fff) as the next level above fortissimo, and on the soft side correspondingly pianississimo (ppp).

Relative, not absolute

The building block Dynamics puts it like this: forte means something different in a string quartet than in a large orchestra. The same holds for ff. An effective forte needs a preceding piano from which it stands out; anyone who always plays at the same volume gives away the most expressive building block of all. If you give everything at the first ff, you have nothing left for a later climax.

The room counts too. The building block points out that in a resonant church a fortissimo can easily overwhelm, whereas a dry small room demands more force.

In the score

The abbreviation ff applies until the next dynamic marking. The symbol library describes it as very loud and as the “dramatic climax” of many works, and advises a full, powerful sound. Two examples from the sheet music archive:

Piano pieces

• Jägerliedchen Robert Schumann, op. 68 No. 7 · piano · 2 pages

  The first part begins with f. After the repeat sign, at the beginning of the second part, ff is marked, followed shortly by p and then ff again. The change between the levels in the same piece shows the distance between them.

• In der Halle des Bergkönigs Edvard Grieg, op. 46 No. 4, from Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 · piano · 4 pages

  The piece begins with p and pp. On the last page, from bar 85, there is a long crescendo that leads into ff in the last bar (bar 88). Two bars before, everything except the accompaniment figure of the left hand has fallen silent, so the ending has all the more effect.

Shaping instead of just being loud

The ff is often the goal of a crescendo. The building block describes it as the strongest build-up of tension in music: the ear experiences the swelling as an increase of energy and urgency. When practising it pays to plan the crescendo early, so that the ff can be reached at the end and is not used up on the way.