Pizzicato
Strings plucked with the finger.
What it means
Pizzicato means plucked and calls for the string to be plucked with the finger instead of bowed. The note thereby arises abruptly and only decays afterward; it can be neither held nor changed in its course. The string instrument is thereby temporarily transformed into a plucked instrument with a language of its own: dry, percussive, full and sustaining in the low register, short and slender in the high one. The instruction is cancelled by arco.
In the notation
The word pizz. stands above the staff at the first note affected and applies until arco appears. Special forms have signs of their own: a circle with a cross or the word snap designates the Bartók pizzicato, in which the string is pulled up and snaps back onto the fingerboard; pizz. sin. calls for plucking with the left hand, usually marked by a small cross above the note.
Musical use
Plucked strings have supplied a distinctly separate colour since the seventeenth century: for accompanying bass figures, for dance-like lightness, for passages where the sound is to be dry and pointed. Whole movements in pizzicato belong to the repertoire of the nineteenth century. Because the tone decays quickly, the balance is different from bowed playing: a pizzicato bass needs room and must not be covered. On the double bass it carries furthest and is the normal case in jazz and dance music.
Performance practice
Pluck with the soft fingertip, not with the nail, and pull the string slightly sideways rather than perpendicularly, otherwise it slaps against the fingerboard. The location determines the colour: over the end of the fingerboard it sounds soft and round, closer to the bridge harder and shorter. Leave the stopping finger of the left hand on the string after plucking, so that the note sounds; remove it early, and it becomes short. Plan where the bow stays, and practise the transition back to bowing. With longer passages, alternate between index and middle finger, to avoid fatigue and uneven attacks.