Last time we looked at the staff and the clef symbols. If you have had a chance to look at a piece of music, you may also have noticed small letters and words written above and below the actual notes and staff. These are expressive marks.
When the composer wants to indicate loudness or softness (dynamics) she will use just symbols or abbreviations of words. Most of the language of music is Italian. Here are some of the most common:
forte (f) - loud
piano (p) - soft
{Sidebar: the full name of a piano is pianoforte. This is because at its time of development it was capable of playing both softly and loudly. Other keyboard instruments up until that time, like the harpsichord, were unable to make such a distinction.}
mezzo (usually used in combination with f and p) - medium [mf will literally mean "medium loud"]
There are further variations with dynamic words. Fortissimo means very loud (the -issimo part tells us that) and pianissimo means very soft (quiet! hush! not so damn loud!)
Crescendo means to gradually get louder and decrescendo means to gradually get softer.
Later composers, such as Percy Grainger, got a bit carried away with their expressive marks. They will characteristically use terms such as "louden", "to the fore" (Grainger's favorite, I think. He uses it a lot), and "as soft as possible." I've also seen: ffff (fortissississimo?) and pppp. When the word niente is used, the composed wants the player to fade into no sound (niente = nothing).
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