Tips and Tricks: Target Dynamics

It's pretty easy to remember to include dynamics in a piece of music, especially at the beginning of the piece or in the beginning of a new section. Including crescendo and decrescendo markings throughout can also be really helpful for expressive singing. However, sometimes a composer writes a really long crescendo or decrescendo without any target dynamic, leaving the performers wondering how far they should go. Did that pianissimo crescendo all the way to a forte, or only a mezzo piano? Does that decrescendo fade away, al niente, or is it meant to stay at a mezzo forte?

Target dynamics are really important so singers and conductors know where a composer means for the phrase to go. You don't need to write them every time you write a hairpin, especially if you're notating a quick messa di voce. For example, something like this is clear enough:

Putting a dynamic in the middle of those hairpins would be too much---unless you really wanted a forte there. Then you'd want to mark that.

As a general rule of thumb, the longer your crescendo or decrescendo, the more important a target dynamic is. Consider this:

This contains two messa di voce markings without target dynamics, but the larger marking is the poco a poco cresc. Notice that there is a forte given in the last measure, giving a target for that larger dynamic phrase. (It's worth mentioning that there's a piano target dynamic given at the end of that last decrescendo---it just appears on the next line of the staff.) Without this forte, it would be easy to mistake that last grouping of hairpins as another messa di voce, and even if there were no other markings on this line, you wouldn't have any idea how far to take the crescendo. The forte makes it clear how loud the singers should get and also helps them understand how to grow the measures leading up to this moment.

Of course, composers are free to not include target dynamics at all and leave all the interpretation fully up to the discretion of the singers and conductor. Sometimes there may be a reason for this approach. Generally, however, this may result in a wildly different sound than the composer intended. Often, it can also simply lead to a lack of dynamic contrast at all, which is almost certainly not what composers want. Using target dynamics is the simplest, cleanest way to communicate your intention to those who will perform your music.