Con strepito

As Printed on a Score

Printed beside a loud dynamic — ff, or within sempre fortissimo e con strepito — at a crashing, virtuoso passage. It colours the passage until the texture or dynamic changes or another character direction appears.

Also spelled: strepito

How Composers Use It

Con strepito asks for noise and clamour: a deliberately thunderous sound in which impact matters more than beauty. Liszt uses it repeatedly, in Mazeppa, Feux follets and the B minor Sonata, where the piano should roar; it gives a player permission to sacrifice polish. Use it rarely and only at true climaxes. Strepitoso is the adjectival form.

Example

Liszt, Transcendental Étude No. 4 (“Mazeppa”), piano, m. 9: “sempre fortissimo e con strepito” at ff, eight bars into the “Allegro.”

Related Terms