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Slackening, easing off.
Printed above the staff, often in parentheses, where the tempo and intensity should ease off; it continues until a tempo or the next tempo word. Graded as ein wenig nachlassend or immer mehr nachlassend.
Slackening: a relaxation of tempo and energy together, gentler than zurückhaltend and less measured than a ritardando. Wagner and Wolf use it to let tension drain at the end of a phrase. Pair it with a dynamic decrease when you want both to subside.
Wagner, Wesendonck-Lieder, No. 5, “Träume”, voice, m. 54: “(nachlassend)”, followed at m. 58 by “(immer mehr nachlassend)”.
Nachlassend 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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