Tempo

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In musical terminology, tempo (Italian for "time") is the speed or pace of a given piece. (How fast or slow the piece goes) It is an extremely crucial element of sound, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.

The plural of tempo in Italian is tempi. Some writers employ this plural when writing in English. Others use the native English plural tempos. Standard dictionaries reflect both usages.

Measuring tempo

The tempo of a piece will typically be written at the start of a piece of music, and in modern music is usually indicated in beats per minute (BPM). This means that a particular note value (for example, a quarter note or crotchet) is specified as the beat, and the marking indicates that a certain number of these beats must be played per minute.

Mathematical tempo markings of this kind became increasingly popular during the first half of the 19th century, after the metronome had been invented, although early metronomes were somewhat unreliable; Beethoven's metronome markings, in particular, are notoriously unreliable. MIDI files today also use the BPM system to denote tempo.

Some 20th century composers (such as Béla Bartók and John Cage) would alternatively give the total execution time of a piece, from which the proper tempo can be roughly derived.

Musical vocabulary for tempo

Whether a music piece has a mathematical time indication or not, in classical music it is customary to describe the tempo of a piece by one or more words. Most of these words are Italian, a result of the fact that many of the most important composers of the 17th century were Italian, and this period was when tempo indications were used extensively for the first time.

Before the metronome, words were the only way to describe the tempo of a composition. Yet after the metronome's invention, these words continued to be used, often additionally indicating the mood of the piece, thus blurring the traditional distinction between tempo and mood indicators. For example, "presto" and "allegro" both indicate a speedy execution ("presto" being faster), but "allegro" has more of a connotation of joy (seen its original meaning in Italian), while "presto" rather indicates speed as such (with possibly an additional connotation of virtuosity). (Presto did not acquire this connotation until the late 18th century.)

Additional Italian words also indicate tempo and mood. For example, the "agitato" in the Allegro agitato of the last movement of George Gershwin's piano concerto in F has both a tempo indication (undoubtedly faster than a usual "Allegro") and a mood indication ("agitated").

Understood tempos

In some cases (quite often up to the end of the Baroque period), conventions governing musical composition were so strong that no tempo had to be indicated. For example, the first movement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 has no tempo or mood indication whatsoever. To provide movement names, publishers of recordings resort to ad hoc measures, for instance marking the Brandenburg movement "Allegro", "(Allegro)", "(Without indication)", and so on.

In Renaissance music most music was understood to flow at a tempo defined by the tactus, roughly the rate of the human heartbeat. Which note value corresponded to the tactus was indicated by the mensural time signature.

Often a particular musical form or genre implies its own tempo, so no further explanation is placed in the score. Thus musicians expect a minuet to be performed as a fairly stately tempo, slower than a Viennese waltz; a Perpetuum Mobile to be quite fast, and so on. The association of tempo with genre means that genres can be used to imply tempos; thus Ludwig van Beethoven wrote "In tempo d'un Menuetto" over the first movement of his Piano Sonata Op. 54, although that movement is not a minuet. Popular music charts use terms such as "bossa nova", "ballad", and "latin rock" in much the same way.

Italian tempo markings

Basic tempo markings

The most common tempo markings in Italian are:

Grave - very slowly and almost solemn
Largo - slowly and broadly
Lento - "slow" but usually only moderately so
Adagio - slowly
Andante - at a walking pace
Moderato - at a moderate tempo, neither fast nor slow
Allegretto - "a little allegro", understood to be not quite as fast as allegro
Allegro - quickly
Vivace - very fast, lively and brisk
Presto - fast
Prestissimo - very, very fast.

Common Qualifiers

assai - very, as in Allegro assai
con brio : con, with + brio, vigour.
non troppo - not too much or non tanto - not so much ; e.g. Allegro non troppo (or Allegro ma non troppo) means "Fast, but not too much."
molto - very, as in Allegro molto
poco - slightly, as in Poco Adagio
piu - more, as in Piu Allegro
meno - less, as in Meno Presto
Various diminutive suffixes in Italian have been used, in addition to Allegretto: Andantino, Larghetto, Adagietto, as well as superlatives such as Larghissimo, Prestissimo.

Mood markings with a tempo connotation

Some markings that primarily mark a mood (or character) also have a tempo connotation:

Vivace - lively (which generally indicates a rather fast movement)
Maestoso - majestic or stately (which generally indicates a solemn, slow movement)
Sostenuto - Sustained, sometimes with a slackening of tempo.

Terms for change in tempo

There is also a set of terms that are used to designate a change of tempo:

Accelerando - speeding up (abbreviation: accel.)
Meno Mosso - less movement or slower
Più Mosso - more movement or faster
Rallentando - slowing down (abbreviation: rall.)
Ritardando - slowing down (abbreviation: rit.)
Ritenuto - slightly slower

These generally designate a gradual change in tempo; for immediate tempo shifts, composers normally just provide the designation for the new tempo. There is also:

A tempo - return to the previous tempo after change(s); and
Tempo Primo - often at the beginning of a new section of a piece, denotes a return to the piece's original tempo.

These terms also indicate an immediate, not a gradual, tempo change. Composers typically use these terms for tempo change even if they have written their initial tempo marking in some other language.

More complex and less precise (though vital in many composers' music) is:

Rubato - free adjustment of tempo for expressive purposes

Tempo markings in other languages

Although Italian has been the prevalent language for tempo markings throughout most of classical music history, many composers have written tempo indications in their own language.

French tempo markings

Several French composers have written markings in French, among them baroque composers François Couperin and Jean-Philippe Rameau as well as impressionist composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Common tempo markings in French are:

Grave - slowly and solemnly
Lent - slowly
Modéré - at a moderate tempo
Vif - lively
Vite - fast
Très - very, as in Très vif (very lively)
Moins - less, as in Moins vite (less fast)

German tempo markings

Many composers have used German tempo markings. Typical German tempo markings are:

Langsam - slowly
Mäßig - moderately
Lebhaft - lively (mood)
Rasch - quickly
Schnell - fast

One of the first German composers to use tempo markings in his native language was Ludwig van Beethoven. The one using the most elaborate combined tempo and mood markings was probably Gustav Mahler. For example, the second movement of his Symphony No. 9 is marked Im tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers, etwas täppisch und sehr derb, indicating a folk-dance–like movement, with some vulgarity in the execution. Mahler would also sometimes combine German tempo markings with traditional Italian markings.

Tempo markings in English

English indications, for example quickly, have also been used, by Benjamin Britten, amongst many others. In jazz and popular music charts, terms like "fast", "laid back", "steady rock", "medium", "medium-up", "ballad", and similar style indications may appear.

Rushing and dragging

When performers unintentionally speed up, they are said to rush. The similar term for unintentionally slowing down is drag. Both of these actions are undesirable; dragging can often indicate a hesitance in the performer due to lack of practice; rushing can likewise destroy the pulse of the music. Because of their negative connotation, neither rush nor drag (nor their equivalents in other languages) are often used as tempo indications in scores, Mahler being a notable exception: as part of a tempo indication he used schleppend ("dragging") in the first movement of his Symphony No. 1, for example.

Can tempo terms be defined with the metronome?

Most musicians would agree that it is not possible to give beats per minute (BPM) equivalents for these terms; the actual number of beats per minute in a piece marked allegro, for example, will depend on the music itself. A piece consisting mainly of minims (half notes) can be played very much quicker in terms of BPM than a piece consisting mainly of semi-quavers (sixteenth notes) but still be described with the same word.

Metronome manufacturers usually do assign BPM values to the traditional terms, but these values are by no means correct for every piece.

Tempo markings as movement names and compositions with a tempo indicator name

Generally, composers (or music publishers) will name movements of classical compositions after their tempo (and/or mood) marking. For instance the second movement of Samuel Barber's first String Quartet is an "Adagio".

Some of such movements may start to lead a life on their own, and become known with the tempo/mood marker name, for instance the string orchestra version of the second movement of Barber's first string quartet became known as Adagio for Strings. A similar example is Mahler's most famous work - the Adagietto from his Symphony No. 5. Another is Mozart's Alla Turca (here indicating the Janissary music type of mood of the final movement of Mozart's 11th Piano Sonata, K. 331)

Sometimes the link between a musical composition with a "tempo" name and a separate movement of a composition is less clear. For instance Albinoni's Adagio, a 20th century creative "reconstruction" based on an incomplete manuscript.

Some composers chose to include tempo indicators in the name of a separate composition, for instance Bartók in Allegro barbaro ("barbaric Allegro"), a single movement composition.

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