Pizzicato

Another early use is found in Claudio Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (around 1638), in which the players are instructed to use two fingers of their right hand to pluck the strings.

In classical double bass playing, pizzicato is often performed with the bow held in the hand; as such, the string is usually only plucked with a single finger.

In contrast, in jazz, bluegrass, and other non-Classical styles, the player is not usually holding a bow and is therefore free to use two or three fingers to pluck the string.

Violinists and violists may also hold the instrument in the "banjo position" (resting horizontally on the lap), and pluck the strings with the thumb of the right hand.

A technique similar to this, where the strings are actually strummed like a guitar, is called for in the 4th movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol (Scena e canto gitano), where the violins, violas, and cellos are instructed to play pizzicato "quasi guitara", the music here consists of three and four-note chords, which are fingered and strummed much like the instrument being imitated.

Left hand pizzicato can also be used while bowed notes are being held, an effect appearing primarily in repertoire of the late 19th century and beyond.

Examples of this technique can be found in the works of Wieniawski, Berg (Violin Concerto), Stravinsky (Three Pieces for String Quartet) and many others.

Maurice Delage calls for slurred pizzicati in the cello part of his Quatre poèmes hindous for soprano and chamber orchestra.

Gustav Mahler famously employs this kind of pizzicato in the third movement of his Seventh Symphony, in which he provides the cellos and double basses with the footnote "pluck so hard that the strings hit the wood" in bar 401.