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For four: four instruments of the same kind play one line together (or, after div. in a string part, the section divides in four).
Printed above a staff that carries four players (a 4, a.4.) when all four play the one written line; it lasts until separate parts or the numbers 1.–4. return. After div. in a string part, a 4 means divided into four.
Abbreviations: a 4, a4, a.4.
Four winds on one line belongs to the late-Romantic orchestra, as with Mahler’s four flutes. It gives great weight and, at soft dynamics, a slightly blurred, mellow tone. Check the line suits every player’s range, remember that a fourth player may be doubling piccolo, and mark exactly where the four split again.
Mahler, Symphony No. 5, first movement, flutes (“Vier Flöten.”), m. 154: “a.4.” at p, one bar before the movement breaks out “Plötzlich schneller. Leidenschaftlich. Wild.”
A quattro is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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