ABC# Italian Musical Terms

"Allegro, Allegro vivace, Crescendo, Diminuendo, Dolce, Sforzando, Strascinando"

If you've started thinking about taking your clothes off, maybe it's watching "A fish called Wanda" you'd rather be than listening to the origin of Italian musical terms.

Words like these are the back end of music used by composers to convey their intentions regarding the performance of their work.  In times when composers didn't particularly go in for descriptive titles these performance directions often make their way into common parlance as identifiers for this or that piece of music.

Classical music, just like jazz, rap or traditional music has its own language for describing it.  All musical performance is governed by the same limits: tempo or speed, mood, and dynamics or how load or soft to play a note.  So what in jazz might be referred to as "Up", to classical performers might mean Allegro and to the man or woman on the street "Lively!" or Fast.

Tradition has it that most of these terms are Italian - going back to a time when Italian composers dominated the musical scene and began indicating how they'd like their music performed.

Initially directions were limited to tempo and so we get something like Andante - from the Italian to walk, or at a walking pace:

[Andante from Flute concerto in D by Tellemann 15'']

An example of Andante from the Flute concerto in D by Tellemann written in . Even though each of the one word Italian terms often have connotations of mood, for example the fast allegro was regularly cheerful, some composers felt the need to add further directions indicating the manner in which they would like their work to be played.  So instead of using just Adagio to indicate slow and leisurely another term was added.  In the case of Haydn's Emperor string quartet, that term was cantabile or in a singing style and so we get Poco Adagio Cantabile Slightly slow but songlike.

[Poco Adagio Cantabile from Op. 76, No. 3 - C major - "Emperor" - Haydn]

Other mood words might include amoroso lovingly or grazioso gracefully.  With the passage of time composers began to become more particular about their directions to performers.  Take Beethoven as an example; the opening to the noted Moonlight Sonata is directed "Adagio sostenuto" slow and sustained.  Add to this the dynamic direction; sempre pianissimo e senza sordino - always very quiet and with the dampers raised, in other words the pianist should use the right or sustaining pedal to create the desired effect

[Opening from Moonlight]

The piano did wonders for performance directions.  Before on keyboard instruments such as the harpsichord which couldn't play loud or soft composers had no need to indicate dynamic markings but the advent of the piano changed all that.  Terms like piano, the Italian for soft, forte - loud, crescendo getting louder, diminuendo getting softer or sforzando with sudden stress all became extremely common.  As the emotions of the Romantic movement became more intense so too did the dynamics.  Take Tchaikovsky's Pathétique Symphony as an example where he veers from pianissississississimo meaning very very very very very softly to fortissississimo very very very loud.  Tchaikovsky could be equally indulgent but always remarkably precise in his performance directions.  In the first piano concerto he denotes the opening to be Allegro non troppo e molto maestoso - Fast but not too much so and very majestic

[Piano Concerto #1 - Tchaikovsky]

Italian's dominance of musical terminology wasn't always going to be 100%.  Even Beethoven used sometimes very long and descriptive German performance indications alongside the traditional Italian ones.  It's generally accepted that with the passage of time composers became more and more exact in their use of directions, prompting them to abandon Italian terms in favour of their own language.  Many however adapted the Italian terms quite colourfully.  Prokofiev in his 7th Piano Sonata entitles the movements: Allegro inquieto, Andante caloroso and Precipitato, Fast and worrisome, warm and slow and impetuously.

Another of my favourite musical terms is dolce literally sweet - there was one famous conductor who in the middle of a rehearsal stopped the orchestra and asked "where is the dolce - more dolce"

Various instrumental techniques also fall under the banner of Italian terms.  One of the most common being pizzicato referring to the plucking of the strings of bowed instruments.  Composers such Johann Strauss made a virtue of this in his Pizzicato Polka

[Pizzicato polka]

Another favourite and one that was a big hit in cartoons is the glissando - a continuous slide up or down that works particularly well on the harp or the piano.

[Example of gliss]

While we're on the topic of Italian musical terms it would be unfair to forget opera where words like aria, bel canto, and coloratura are commonplace.  Opera itself is an Italian word for "the work". 

[Bell song - Lakmé] Arias are songs for solo voice with instrumental accompaniment. Usually they emphasize musical expression more than the text.

This, the Bell song from Delibe's opera Lakmé is an example of coloratura singing a particularly ornate and colourful display.
Another term which often causes confusion is libretto literally, "little book." The book containing the words sung by the characters in an opera. One libretto can be set to music by several different composers, meaning that several different operas might have exactly the same words.  It's also worth bearing in mind that Libretto gives way to librettist, the author of the libretto.

Now that you know your allegro from your andante and your pianissimo from your fortissimo I'd like to remind you that tomorrow here at the same time I'll be taking a look at the various periods in musical history and the differences between the Baroque, the Classical and the Romantic.