The Short

NOTATION OF ACCENTS AND DYNAMICS 93
Among later nineteenth-century composers who used the term fairly frequently was Liszt. His employment of ‘rinforz’
in, for instance, his Années de pèlerinage (Ex. 3.42(a)) seems plausibly to be in Milchmeyer's and Gollmick's sense of
‘continuously lively, strong’; and his use of the term in his Faust-Symphonie suggests a similar interpretation (Ex. 3.42(b).)
Brahms's use of the marking is ambiguous and may have changed with time. It occurs in the Serenade op. 11 (where,
however, there is no use of sf), apparently as an accent applying to a single note. In the Serenade op. 16 and some later
works both markings occur in contexts that suggest that Brahms may have intended rfto be a less powerful accent
than sf.This appears also to be the case in the 1854 version of the Trio op. 8, where it occurs several times (Ex. 3.43;)
but it is conspicuous by its absence from the 1891 revision of the trio. At least one early occurrence of the marking in
Brahms's works seems to accord with Liszt's use of it in the Années de pèlerinage (Ex. 3.44.) In works of the 1880s and
1890s Brahms scarcely if ever employed it.