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Dizzily, whirling.
Printed above the staff, usually in a phrase (vertiginoso con furia), at a passage of rapid figuration; it lasts for that passage, and its loudness comes from the dynamics printed with it, not from the word.
Dizzying, whirling — the sense of losing balance, not merely of speed. Scriabin uses such extravagant character words in his late sonatas, where the words carry an ecstatic programme. Use it only where the writing itself whirls (rapid figuration, wide sweeps across the keyboard); the word will not make plain music dizzy.
Scriabin, Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53, m. 409: “vertiginoso con furia”, with sf accents in the following bars.
Vertiginoso 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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