28 by Frédéric Chopin will serve as one example I will later move on to a piano LP by the Swiss artist Dieter Roth and will end with an orchestral work by the young German composer Hannes Seidl. I would like to stay with piano music for a while, where the rapid fading away of tone is normal, and a central component for the regulation of this process, the damper, is called il smorzatore in Italian. Instead, my article focuses on the phenomenon of the ephemeral in music in general. One could now list countless examples of music containing smorzando or related expressions, such as morendo or calando. There, smorzando immediately follows the expression smorfioso (grotesque) – I’ve never come across that in any score – and means weakening, extinguishing, dying, an utmost diminuendo with simultaneous ritardando. Now, the process of resolving and sublimation seems entirely appropriate to all kinds of sound experience, and Chopin’s music in particular is undoubtedly sublime, but prioritizing a biting stinging in one’s nose is certainly inappropriate.Ĭonsulting a dictionary actually reveals the completely opposite meaning: smorzando comes from the Italian smorzare, which means nothing less than to extinguish a fire, smorzare il fuoco, but also to temper a too-spicy tomato sauce ( smorzare il piccante).īut, as is well known, the Italian used in music is an artificial language, and consulting a music dictionary gives another meaning. This can indicate a slight smell of burning in the air as well as the combustion process itself. To this day, I cannot help but associate smorz with what I spontaneously associated it with during that time: schmürzele, a similar-sounding word in Swiss German. And then, just before the end of the piece, he puzzled me with: smorz, short for smorzando, as my piano teacher knew. Once he asked for con forza as a young man at the piano, I didn’t need to be told twice.

At the very beginning, the composer encouraged me with a dolce espressivo, later intensified to dolcissimo. At some point in my adolescence, I finally managed to play the famous Nocturne in E-flat major, Op.

Smorz piano