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With mute: on strings and brass, a mute veils the tone. In piano music the word refers to the pedals — Beethoven’s senza sordini means dampers raised, and later composers’ con sordina asks for the soft pedal.
Printed above the part as con sord., con sordino or, for a section, con sordini, after a few bars’ rest so the mute can be fitted; senza sordino or via sordini removes it. In piano music the word concerns the pedals: Beethoven’s senza sordini means with the dampers raised, while the con sordina of later composers asks for the soft pedal.
Abbreviations: con sord., con sord
Also spelled: con sordina, Con sordini
Muted strings have a distinctive veiled quality — intimate, distant, mysterious. Allow 2–3 beats of rest for players to apply mutes (more for double bass). Mark "senza sordino" to remove. Muted brass is an entirely different effect — more nasal and buzzy.
Beethoven, Symphony No. 6 (“Pastoral”), second movement (“Scene am Bach”), solo cello part, m. 1: “Con sordino”, while the remaining cellos and the basses play pizz. under the heading “Andante molto mosso”.
Con sordino 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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