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Tender, delicate — with extreme gentleness.
Printed above the staff or beside a soft dynamic, often in parentheses or compounded — sehr zart, äusserst zart, zart bewegt, zart, aber ausdrucksvoll, immer zart. Some editions print an Italian equivalent next to it (zart with dolce). It applies to the passage until a contrary instruction.
Zart asks for the most delicate touch possible. Mahler uses it for his most fragile, vulnerable passages — music that seems like it could dissolve at any moment.
Mahler, Kindertotenlieder, No. 2 “Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen”, voice, m. 15: “zart” beside “dolce” at p — this edition prints German and Italian directions together.
Zart is one of 1760 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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