Crescendo is an important means of musical expression. It turns the piece performed into a colorful, vivid artistic delight, and makes its performance expressive and emotional.
"Crescendo" is a musical term and refers to the multiple amplification of sound. Its origins date back to cheerful and sunny Italy. This is the original form of expression in music. "Crescendo" is a professional concept and at the same time a kind of special language that expresses all the beauty and depth of a piece of music. This seemingly insignificant nuance, capable of creating a real tasty artistic masterpiece from the simplest piece of music. And also to show the extraordinary virtuosity of the master playing the instrument.
Music is a faithful companion
Since ancient times, people have known about the effect of the sound of musical instruments on human mood. Music was able to awaken even in the most callous soul a sense of joy and exultation. She was able to make me sad and cry. And also to tune in to love or kindle a burning feeling of struggle. Different instruments, different sounds. A quiet and melodious harp, lyre, cithara, or a flute made of reeds, awakened peace and the desire to contemplate. And the formidable and loud sound of the horns of animals, for example, the Hebrew shofar, contributed to the emergence of solemn and religious feelings. Drums and other percussion instruments added to loud horns and trumpets helped to cope with animal fear and awaken aggression and belligerence.
It has long been noticed that the joint play of several similar instruments enhances not only the brightness of the sound, but also the psychological effect on the listener - the same effect that occurs when a large number of people sing the same melody together (choir). And when singing or playing musicians begin to perform a piece slowly and very quietly at first, and then increase the tempo and volume, it always has an awakening excitement and passion.
"Crescendo" is the intensity of feelings
If a piece of music was performed at the same tempo, it would become uninteresting and dull. Listening to this kind of music is a torment. And aesthetic pleasure would be generally unattainable. By enhancing the sound (crescendo) or decreasing its sound (diminuendo), the musician creates a work that can cause the strongest emotional outbursts: joy and exultation, delight and fiery passion. "Crescendo" has the message of a slow increase in excitement, increases the incandescence of sensuality many times over, causes tension of emotions and creates anxious expectation of something grandiose. Begins to take your breath away. Goosebumps treacherously give out about insane excitement. Seems to be starting to run out of air. These are the emotions that sometimes overwhelm when the musical intensity reaches the limit.
In notation, this musical device is written as crescendo or sometimes abbreviated as cresc. It often happens that the sound build-up occurs quite gradually. Then, together with the designation crescendo, its "relative" from Italy is added, denoted by the musical term poco a poco. This means, translated into Russian, "little by little."
Creation of "crescendo"
How is the power of sound created? Professionals who own stringed instruments also know the following trick. If you accelerate the movement of the bow in "free flight" without pinching the strings, you get the coolest "crescendo". The conductor plays the "main violin" here. He slowly enlarges the gestures and eventually opens his arms wide to the sides, thereby, as if covering a large volume of the area. It should be noted that staying only on a single note, without changing the pitch, it is quite possible to change the strength of the sound. But this is only when it comes to the instruments of the string-bow group. Applying crescendo to a keyboard group is completely different. There are a number of special professional subtleties here. If we take the organ, the progenitor of the modern piano, then the mechanics of this musical instrument do not allow producing crescendo on it. The design here is made in such a way as to make the timbre different, to affect the dynamics and volume. This requires the use of a variety of levers to switch special registers.
For dynamic magnification, special additional keyboards were created. With their help, a sound with a doubled octave was extracted. At the same time, enriched with overtones, the illusion of changing the sound volume was created. But on crescendo it was difficult to pull it off. The extraction of the amplified sound was with a sharp drop. And "crescendo" is a gradual increase in sound, and the gradation that appears suddenly, kills the reception in the bud. True crescendo was only possible with the introduction of the hammer action of keyboards. The keyboard instrument of today can reproduce a wide variety of timbres and dynamic gradations. But there are also limitations here.
The mechanism for extracting sounds in the piano is designed in such a way that each "birth" of a sound instantly introduces it into a kind of "dying". The sound, as it were, loses its strength and fades away. Therefore, to create the effect of "crescendo", the duration of the notes should be exactly such that, before the complete "decay" of one sound, the sound "last" has time to "be born". A single sound is unable to make a crescendo. But in this situation there is a small nuance that can save the "crescendo". The moment a chord or sound is struck, you need to "support" it with the pedal on the right. Enriched, it will "give out" the coveted gain.
"Crescendo" in Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony
A striking example of "crescendo" is the depiction of panic horror from the "inflow" invasion of fascism in Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony. Hearing the terrible roar of fascist guns, watching the German "lighters" being extinguished on the roof of his native Leningrad Conservatory, the composer angrily said: "Here the muses speak at the same time as the cannons." This phrase was said in opposition to the Russian proverb "When the guns speak, the muses are silent." Shostakovich wrote his seventh symphony for a huge orchestra. Of course, it is not a battle piece, but it is still a model for a story about the war years in Russia.
Horror and pain, death and loss run like a red line throughout the entire work. Beginning even a little amorphous, the heat slowly builds up, raising excitement and trembling in the soul. In this warlike theme, Shostakovich uses a special musical technique, when violinists, striking the strings with the back of their bows, introduce a melody that could sound in a puppet theater. This light roll, almost inaudible at the beginning, grows, expands and is repeated twelve times during the increasing twelve-minute crescendo. So it took place and, as always, became the apogee of history.
I must say thank you to the Italians for the "crescendo" as for another Italian artistic masterpiece. This country truly knows a lot about perfection and beauty. Perhaps, without this musical technique, it is almost impossible to convey the intensity of feelings. "Crescendo" is the apotheosis of any of the simplest stories. This is not just an amplification of a short musical episode. This is a challenge to everything that is faded, sluggish and incapable of resisting. This is the attunement of the soul and body to the explosion of emotions, the seething of blood, a mortal fight. At this moment, the culmination of events occurs, a kind of summing up. It is a short but colorful life in a long series of musical storytelling events.
