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Becoming louder.
Printed under the staff where a crescendo begins, often joined to a tempo change — en animant et en augmentant, en pressant peu à peu et en augmentant — with dashes extending to the point of arrival. It lasts until the next dynamic is reached.
En augmentant is the French crescendo. Composers use it mainly to bind a growth in volume to a growth in speed or intensity in one breath, as Debussy and Chausson do; on its own, cresc. is shorter and clearer. Give the goal dynamic and, when tempo changes with it, make clear whether the two arrive together. Its counterpart is en diminuant; sans augmenter forbids the swell.
Debussy, Trois Chansons de Bilitis, “La chevelure”, voice, m. 15: “En pressant peu à peu et en augmentant” — speed and volume rising together.
En augmentant 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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