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Music vocabulary · Performance and Practice

Decrescendo

Meaning in music, with examples

nounCommon term

In music, decrescendo means: A gradual decrease in loudness over a passage, shown in performance or marked in the score.

In Turkish: giderek hafifleme

How it is used

Used by performers, conductors, and composers when shaping phrases. It may be marked with the word itself or with a closing wedge.

Example sentences

  1. The conductor asked for a longer decrescendo at the end of the phrase so the woodwinds could hand the line to the strings.

    Here, decrescendo shapes a transition between sections by reducing volume gradually instead of stopping or dropping suddenly.

  2. While mixing the live recording, we preserved the singer’s natural decrescendo rather than compressing the final line flat.

    In this example, the term refers to an expressive reduction in volume that carries musical meaning and should remain audible.

Common collocations

  • gradual decrescendo
  • mark a decrescendo
  • decrescendo passage
  • scoreWritten music that shows all the parts of a piece together, one above the other. It also means the original music written for a film, series or game.
  • conductorThe person who leads an orchestra or choir, setting the tempo, showing entries and shaping the performance with hand movements or a baton.

More terms: Performance and Practice

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