Secco

As Printed on a Score

Printed above or below a note or chord, often a final one, and sometimes across every part at once. It usually applies to the sound it marks — cut off dry, with no ring or pedal — and over a passage lasts until another articulation.

How Composers Use It

Dry: short, with the resonance stopped. Mahler marks the closing bars of his Fifth Symphony secco across the orchestra and has the timpani and cymbals damped at once, so the work ends with a snap rather than a reverberation. Percussion and piano need explicit damping to obey it. In recitative, secco describes the voice accompanied by continuo alone.

Example

Mahler, Symphony No. 5, fifth movement (Rondo-Finale), m. 787: “secco” in the flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trumpet and string parts, two bars after the closing “Presto.”; the timpani are told “schnell abdämpfen”.

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