View source for Pensato

{{Short description|Composed imaginary musical note}}
{{More footnotes needed|date=June 2025}}
In [[music]], a '''pensato''' ({{langx|it|"thought"}}) is a [[musical composition|composed]] imaginary [[note (music)|note]], a written note which is neither [[performance|played]] nor [[music reception|heard]]. "This meant that a note had to be so indescribably tender and soft that it was only allowed to be thought of." (Score 1958)

[[Anton Webern]] is credited by some with the first use of pensatos, while others argue he did not use them at all. As [[Alex Ross (music critic)|Alex Ross]] (2007: 69, quoted in Toop 2016: 158) puts it: "The Joke went around that Webern had introduced the marking ''pensato'': Don't play the note, only think it." [[George Perle]] (1990: {{page needed|date=June 2017}}), noting that "no composer has ever been more concrete, explicit, detailed, and subtle in his [[musical notation|notation]]," argues that if Webern did use a pensato, it would have been a pitch "with all the attributes that give a note actuality: [[pitch (music)|pitch]], [[duration (music)|duration]], mode of attack and release, [[timbre]], [[dynamics (music)|intensity]]," and not a [[pitch class]]. He also points to a "verifiable ''pensato''" in the last bar of [[Alban Berg]]'s ''[[Lyric Suite (Berg)|Lyric Suite]]'': "The instruments drop out one by one, the four parts converging into a single line that continues into an ''[[ostinato]]'' on the last two notes of the derived series and becomes inaudible on the penultimate note of the series, seemingly continuing into the silence beyond." (Perle, 1985: 14) The last measure of the score is marked "[[Dynamics (music)#Gradual changes|dimin.]]", then "[[morendo]]...*", then the asterisk reads: "*)bis zum völligen Verlöschen, daher die letzte Terz ''Des—F'' eventuell noch ein-, zweimal wiederholen. Keinesfalls aber auf ''Des'' schließen!" ("until completely extinguished, repeat the last third of Des — F once or twice. In no case, however, conclude to Des!") Presumably an expression of unrequited love (Santos 2014: 35).

==See also==
* [[Ghost note]]
* [[Melodic expectation]]
* [[Niente (musical dynamic)]]

==Sources==
*{{IMSLP|work=Lyrische_Suite_(Berg,_Alban)|cname=''Lyrische Suite'' (1927), p.83}}
* Perle, George (1990). ''The Listening Composer'' California: University of California Press. {{ISBN|978-0-520-06991-6}}.
* Perle, George (1985). ''The Operas of Alban Berg. Vol. 2: Lulu''. California: University of California Press.
* Ross, Alex (2007). ''The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century''. Macmillan. {{ISBN|978-0-374-24939-7}}.
* Santos, Silvio dos (2014). ''Narratives of Identity in Alban Berg's 'Lulu'''. Boydell & Brewer. {{ISBN|978-1-58046-483-3}}.
* [[David Toop|Toop, David]] (2016). ''Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom: Before 1970''. Bloomsbury. {{ISBN|978-1-4411-0277-5}}.
* (1958). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=CyRMAAAAYAAJ&q=pensato The Score]'', Issues 22-28.

{{Dynamics (music)}}

[[Category:Italian words and phrases]]
[[Category:Musical notes]]


{{music-theory-stub}}