diminuendo

A dynamic mark directing that a passage is to be played gradually more softly

A passage having this mark

The gradual dying away of something.

Thus, in "Flavia and Her Artists" (1905), for example, a fiction of consonance in diminuendo, the French subtext states a set of harmonies (the young American returned from France) and cacophonies (the supercilious French art critic, Roux) shedding light on the main text with its own consonances of intergenerationsl friendship, marital loyalty, artistic pleasure, and joyful lesbianism.

Harlow gazed, like Henry, out the wide corner window, enjoying the diminuendos of the light.

played in this style

describing a passage having this mark