
Pizzicato (, ; translated as 'pinched', and sometimes roughly as 'plucked') is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a
string instrument
In musical instrument classification, string instruments, or chordophones, are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer strums, plucks, strikes or sounds the strings in varying manners.
Musicians play some ...
. The exact technique varies somewhat depending on the type of instrument:
* On
bowed string instruments it is a method of playing by plucking the strings with the fingers, rather than using the
bow. This produces a very different sound from bowing, short and percussive rather than sustained.
* On keyboard string instruments, such as the piano, pizzicato may be employed (although rarely seen in traditional repertoire, this technique has been normalized in contemporary music, with ample examples by
George Crumb,
Tōru Takemitsu,
Helmut Lachenmann, and others) as one of the variety of techniques involving direct manipulation of the strings known collectively as "
string piano".
* On the guitar, it is a muted form of plucking, which bears an audible resemblance to pizzicato on a bowed string instrument with its relatively shorter sustain. It is also known (especially in non-classical guitar) as
palm muting.
When a string is struck or plucked, including pizzicato, sound waves are generated that do not belong to a
harmonic series as when a string is bowed.
[Matti A. Karjalainen (1999)]
"Audibility of Inharmonicity in String Instrument Sounds, and Implications to Digital Sound Systems"
This complex
timbre
In music, timbre (), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes sounds according to their source, such as choir voices and musical instrument ...
is called
inharmonicity. The inharmonicity of a string depends on its physical characteristics, such as tension, composition, diameter and length. The inharmonicity disappears when strings are bowed because the bow's stick-slip action is periodic, so it drives all of the resonances of the string at exactly harmonic ratios, even if it has to drive them slightly off their natural frequency.
[Neville H. Fletcher (1994)]
"Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos in Musical Instruments"
. Complexity International.
History
The first recognised use in Classical Music is found in Tobias Hume’s The First Part of Ayres 1605. Instruction is given to ‘‘play one straine with your fingers, the other with your Bow’, ‘to be plaide with your fingers … your Bow ever in your hand’’. (Morrow et al. 2021)
Another early use is found in
Claudio Monteverdi's ''
Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda'' (around 1638), in which the players are instructed to use two fingers of their right hand to pluck the strings. Later, in 1756,
Leopold Mozart in his ''
Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule'' instructs the player to use the index finger of the right hand. This has remained the most usual way to execute a pizzicato, though sometimes the middle finger is used. The bow is held in the hand at the same time unless there is enough time to put it down and pick it up again between bowed passages.
Uses in various styles of music
In
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, h ...
and
bluegrass, and the few
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...
styles which use double bass (such as French modern
chanson
A (, ; , ) is generally any Lyrics, lyric-driven French song. The term is most commonly used in English to refer either to the secular polyphonic French songs of late medieval music, medieval and Renaissance music or to a specific style of ...
, American
psychobilly
Psychobilly (or punkabilly) is a rock music fusion genre that fuses elements of rockabilly and punk rock. It has been defined as "loud frantic rockabilly music", it has also been said that it "takes the traditional country rock, countrified rock ...
and
rockabilly
Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music. It dates back to the early 1950s in the United States, especially the Southern United States, South. As a genre, it blends the sound of Western music (North America), Western musi ...
), pizzicato is the usual way to play the
double bass
The double bass (), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument, chordophone in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions ...
. This is unusual for a violin-family instrument, because regardless whether violin-family instruments are being used in jazz (e.g., jazz violin), popular, traditional (e.g., Bluegrass fiddle) or
Classical music
Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be #Relationship to other music traditions, distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical mu ...
, they are usually played with the bow for most of a performance. In classical double bass playing, pizzicato is often performed with the bow held in the hand; as such, the string is usually only plucked with a single finger. In contrast, in jazz, bluegrass, and other non-Classical styles, the player is not usually holding a bow and is therefore free to use two or three fingers to pluck the string.
In classical music, however, string instruments are most usually played with the bow, and
composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and def ...
s give specific indications to play pizzicato where required. Pieces in classical music that are played entirely pizzicato include:
*
J. S. Bach: the ninth movement of the ''
Magnificat'' (1723–1733)
*
Johann Strauss II
Johann Baptist Strauss II (; ; 25 October 1825 – 3 June 1899), also known as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger or the Son (), was an List of Austrian composers, Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas as well ...
and
Josef Strauss: ''Pizzicato Polka'' (1869)
*
Edvard Grieg: Act IV – Anitra's Dance in ''
Peer Gynt
''Peer Gynt'' (, ) is a five-Act (drama), act play in verse written in 1867 by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. It is one of Ibsen's best known and most widely performed plays.
''Peer Gynt'' chronicles the journey of its title character fr ...
'' (1874)
*
Léo Delibes: the "Divertissement: Pizzicati" from Act 3 of the ballet ''
Sylvia'' (1876)
*
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: the third movement of the
4th symphony (1877–78)
*
Johann Strauss II
Johann Baptist Strauss II (; ; 25 October 1825 – 3 June 1899), also known as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger or the Son (), was an List of Austrian composers, Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas as well ...
: ''
Neue Pizzicato Polka'' (1892)
*
Helmer Alexandersson: the third movement of his second symphony (1919)
*
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók (; ; 25 March 1881 – 26 September 1945) was a Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century; he and Franz Liszt are regarded as Hunga ...
: the fourth movement of the ''
String Quartet No. 4'' (1928)
*
Benjamin Britten: the second movement of the ''
Simple Symphony'' (1934)
*
Leroy Anderson: ''Jazz Pizzicato'' (1938) and ''Plink, Plank, Plunk!'' (1951)
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741) was an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist, impresario of Baroque music and Roman Catholic priest. Regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, Vivaldi's influence during his lif ...
, in the "Ah Ch'Infelice Sempre" section of his cantata ''
Cessate, omai cessate'', combined both pizzicato and bowed instruments to create a unique sound. He also included pizzicato in the second movement of "Winter" from ''
The Four Seasons''.
Notation
In
music notation
Musical notation is any system used to visually represent music. Systems of notation generally represent the elements of a piece of music that are considered important for its performance in the context of a given musical tradition. The proces ...
, a composer will normally indicate the performer should use pizzicato with the abbreviation ''pizz.'' A return to bowing is indicated by the
Italian term ''arco'' or ''bog''. A left hand pizzicato is usually indicated by writing a small cross above the note, and a
Bartók pizzicato is often indicated by a circle with a small vertical line through the top of it above the note in question or by writing ''Bartók pizz'' at the start of the relevant passage.
In classical music, arco playing is the default assumption; thus, if a music notation part starts and no indication is given as to whether the notes are arco or pizz, the player assumes that the notes are bowed.
Bowed string instrument technique
Practical implications
If a
string player has to play pizzicato for a long period of time, the performer may put down the bow.
Violin
The violin, sometimes referred to as a fiddle, is a wooden chordophone, and is the smallest, and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in regular use in the violin family. Smaller violin-type instruments exist, including the violino picc ...
ists and
violists may also hold the instrument in the "
banjo position" (resting horizontally on the lap), and pluck the strings with the thumb of the right hand. This technique is rarely used, and usually only in movements which are pizzicato throughout. A technique similar to this, where the strings are actually strummed like a
guitar
The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming ...
, is called for in the 4th movement of
Rimsky-Korsakov's ''
Capriccio Espagnol'' (Scena e canto gitano), where the violins, violas, and cellos are instructed to play pizzicato "quasi guitara", the music here consists of three and four-note chords, which are fingered and strummed much like the instrument being imitated.
Other pizzicato techniques
Another colorful pizzicato technique used in the Rimsky-Korsakov piece mentioned above is two-handed pizzicato, indicated by the markings ''m.s.'' and ''m.d.'' (for ''mano sinistra'', 'left hand', and ''mano destra'', 'right hand'); here, the open E string is plucked alternately in rapid succession by the left and right hands.
One can also use the left hand fingers for pizzicato, either when they are not in use or as they are leaving their previous position. This allows pizzicati in places where there would not normally be time to bring the right hand from or to the bowing position. Use of left-hand pizzicato is relatively uncommon and is most often found in the violin solo repertoire; two famous examples of left-hand pizzicato are
Paganini's
24th Caprice and
Sarasate's
Zigeunerweisen. Left hand pizzicato can also be used while bowed notes are being held, an effect appearing primarily in repertoire of the late 19th century and beyond. Examples of this technique can be found in the works of
Wieniawski,
Berg (''
Violin Concerto''),
Stravinsky (''
Three Pieces for String Quartet'') and many others.
Maurice Delage calls for slurred pizzicati in the cello part of his ''Quatre poèmes hindous'' for soprano and chamber orchestra. This is achieved by playing one note, and then stopping a new note on the same string without plucking the string again. This technique (known as "
hammering-on" on guitar) is rarely used on bowed instruments.
A further variation is a particularly strong pizzicato where the string is plucked vertically by snapping and rebounds off the fingerboard of the instrument. This is known as ''snap pizzicato'' or ''Bartók pizzicato'', after
one of the first composers to use it extensively (e.g. in the 4th movement of his
Fourth String Quartet, 1928).
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic music, Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and ...
famously employs this kind of pizzicato in the third movement of his
Seventh Symphony, in which he provides the cellos and double basses with the footnote "pluck so hard that the strings hit the wood" in bar 401.
On the double bass, this style of snap pizzicato, or "slapping", was used in jazz since the 1920s and later used in rockabilly. Because an unamplified double bass is generally the quietest instrument in a jazz band, many players of the 1920s and 1930s used the slap style, slapping and pulling the strings so that they make a rhythmic "slap" sound against the fingerboard. The slap style cuts through the sound of a band better than simply plucking the strings, and allowed the bass to be more easily heard on early sound recordings, as the recording equipment of that time did not favor low frequencies.
Bartók also made use of pizzicato
glissandi
In music, a glissando (; plural: ''glissandi'', abbreviated ''gliss.'') is a wikt:glide, glide from one pitch (music), pitch to another (). It is an Italianized Musical terminology, musical term derived from the French ''glisser'', "to glide". In ...
, executed by plucking a note and then sliding the stopping finger up or down the string. This technique can be heard in his ''
Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta''.
Roman Kim made pizzicatos using his mouth.
Notes
References
{{Violin family
Articulations (music)
Italian words and phrases
String performance techniques
5. Morrow, Michael, Colette Harris, and Frank Traficante. 2021. ‘Hume, Tobias.’ in Grove Music Online. Accessed March 22, 2025. Oxford Music Online. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000013542.