Corda

As Printed on a Score

Seldom printed alone. In piano music it appears inside the pedal directions una corda, tre corde and tutte le corde, written below the staff; in string parts a numeral with corda (IV corda, sulla IV corda) names the string to play on, and holds until the passage ends or ordinary playing is restored.

Also spelled: corde

How Composers Use It

For pianists, corda markings are colour directions, and each una corda needs its tre corde to cancel it. For strings, naming the string keeps a melody in one tone colour — the darker, more intense sound of a lower string played high up — at the cost of more shifting; Paganini’s writing for the G string alone is the extreme case.

Example

Liszt, Transcendental Étude No. 3 (“Paysage”), m. 1: “dolcissimo, una corda” — the study begins on the soft pedal under “Poco Adagio.”

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