pizzicato

pizzicato , in music, the technique of plucking the strings of an instrument that is usually bowed. Directions for playing pizzicato are found in early 17th-century music. Paganini introduced left-hand pizzicato, making it possible to play bowed tones and pizzicato tones simultaneously or in alternation.

pizzicato XIX. — It., pp. of pizzicare pinch, twitch, f. pizzare, f. (O)It. pizza point, edge.

pizzicato (It., abbreviated to pizz.; Fr. pincé). Pinched. Direction that notes on str. instr. are to be prod. by plucking, not bowing, the str. An early use occurs in Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624), but Tobias Hume in Harke, harke, one of his ‘Musicall Humors’ from The First Part of Ayres (1605, Musica Britannica IX, 116), written for bass viol and lyra viol, instructs the performers to ‘play 9 letters (i.e. notes) with your fingers’. In his vn. conc. (1910), Elgar uses the direction pizzicato tremolando, meaning that the players should ‘thrum’ rapidly with the fingers across the str.