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Intense.
Printed above the staff or over the voice, often graded — plus intense, très intense — and sometimes joined to another character word (plus intense, gravement). It describes expressive pressure for the passage and lasts until a new character marking.
It asks for concentrated tone and commitment rather than a particular volume: an intense p can be as charged as an f. Lili Boulanger uses it at quiet moments as well as loud ones, and its graded forms let you build a climax over several entries. Pair it with a dynamic so the performer knows how much sound the intensity should carry.
Boulanger, Dans l’immense tristesse, voice, m. 20: “intense”, following a p in the bar before; the song opens “Lent”.
Intense 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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