Fiati

As Printed on a Score

Italian for the winds — woodwind and brass together (strumenti a fiato). It appears in instrumentation lists, prefaces, titles and occasional instructions to the whole wind body rather than as a staff label; a quintetto di fiati is a wind quintet.

Also spelled: Blasinstrumente

How Composers Use It

Use it for instructions that genuinely concern every wind player, such as a balance note or a direction to an offstage band; for anything that is played, name the instruments. In chamber titles (Serenata per fiati, Quintetto per fiati) it identifies the ensemble, and writers working in Italian use it as English writers use “winds”.