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With. The most common prefix in Italian musical directions: con sordino, con fuoco, con brio, con anima, con moto.
Prints in front of the quality or device it adds — “Allegro con brio”, “con sord.”, “con pedale”, “con forza” — and lasts as long as the word it introduces: a tempo heading until the next tempo word, a device until senza cancels it. Before an article it fuses into col, colla or coll’ (col legno, colla parte).
Con adds a quality to a tempo or expression marking. Allegro con brio = fast with spirit. Adagio con moto = slow with motion. Con sordino = with mute. It is the workhorse connector in musical Italian.
Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, first movement: Allegro con brio — fast with spirit.
Con is one of 1760 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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