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Without mute or hand-stopping: the normal sound of a brass instrument, cancelling muted or stopped (+) playing; also an open string (o). In English keyboard music of the 1790s, “open pedal” means raise the dampers.
In brass parts, open (or o) cancels muted or stopped (+) playing and is printed over the note or passage where the normal sound returns. String parts use o for an open string. In late-eighteenth-century English keyboard music, open pedal means raise the dampers.
Write open wherever a muted or stopped passage ends, because parts are read in isolation. On horn, alternating stopped and open notes (+ and o) gives an echo-like contrast; allow time between them. Open strings ring more and cannot take vibrato, which matters in slow, expressive lines. Haydn’s open pedal is a reminder that one word can mean different things in different repertoires.
Haydn, Keyboard Sonata in C major, Hob. XVI:50, first movement, m. 73: “open pedal” is printed at pp, asking for the dampers to be raised; the marking returns at m. 120.
Open 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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