Estinto

As Printed on a Score

Printed as a word above or below the staff, often with ppp or with sotto voce, at the passage it describes. It colours that passage until a new dynamic or expressive word replaces it.

How Composers Use It

Extinguished: softer than soft, the tone almost lifeless. It is a colour instruction as much as a level, used for moments of numbness or exhaustion, as in Berlioz’s songs. Keep it short and place it where a drained sound means something; a long estinto passage is hard to sustain and loses its effect.

Example

Berlioz, Les nuits d’été, Op. 7, “Absence”, voice, m. 53: “sotto voce ed estinto” at ppp.

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