With

As Printed on a Score

Opens an English direction naming something the player adds — with mute, with pedal, with a gentle lilt, with feeling — printed over the part it concerns. Device instructions last until their opposite cancels them (without mute, mute off); character phrases last until a new one replaces them.

How Composers Use It

The English con. It works best with a concrete noun (with mute, with brushes) or a single clear quality; long chains of with-phrases blur. When it introduces a device, plan the cancellation and the time needed for both changes. English song composers often wrote whole headings as with-phrases, which conveys character and tempo together but leaves the speed approximate.

Example

Warlock, Peterisms (first set), “A Sad Song”, voice, m. 1: “With a gentle lilt” is the song’s only opening heading, doing the work of an Italian tempo word.

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