Why are musical terms (still) in Italian?

Allegro, adagio, forte, piano: anyone who has ever opened a recorder or piano book knows them. Musical terms are Italian, and they have been for centuries. Italy led the way in music history for long enough to turn its language into the language of music, and once a standard works, nobody is in a hurry to replace it. Even composers who tried using their own language couldn’t get rid of the Italian.

Italy set the tone for centuries

The answer is less exciting than you might hope: the Italians got there first. A large share of the innovations in Western music took place in what is now Italy. Opera is an Italian invention, and many of the leading composers of the time came from Italian cities, such as Claudio Monteverdi and Antonio Vivaldi. And whoever shapes the music also shapes the words used to talk about it.

The rest of Europe watched and followed suit. Composers from other countries travelled to Italy to learn their craft, Handel and Mozart set Italian texts to music, and the directions above the stave came along in the same language. Music historians don’t entirely agree on exactly when the tipping point came. That it happened in Italy, however, is beyond dispute.

After that, the same thing happened as with any standard that works: nobody gets rid of it. Think of the plug socket. The one in your country is probably not the ultimate design, but your house is full of them and all your appliances are made to fit, so nobody bothers starting from scratch. That’s why a violinist in Tokyo, Berlin or Leeds still reads presto above the very same bar today.

The most common Italian musical terms at a glance

With the following Italian words, you can read most of the sheet music out there. They fall roughly into three groups: tempo, dynamics and expression.

Tempo is all about how fast you play and how that speed changes. From slow to fast, these are the directions you’ll come across most often, followed by the terms for changes in tempo:

Largo: broad and slow
Lento: slow
Adagio: slow and relaxed
Andante: at a walking pace
Moderato: moderate
Allegretto: slightly less fast than allegro
Allegro: fast
Vivace: lively and quick
Presto: faster than allegro
Prestissimo: as fast as possible
Accelerando: gradually getting faster
Ritardando or rallentando: gradually getting slower
A tempo: back to the original tempo
Rubato: taking freedom with the tempo

Dynamics are about how loudly or softly you play. In the score, you’ll usually only see the abbreviations written below the notes.

Pianissimo (pp): softer than piano
Piano (p): soft
Mezzopiano (mp): moderately soft
Mezzoforte (mf): moderately loud
Forte (f): strong, loud
Fortissimo (ff): louder than forte
Crescendo (cresc.): gradually getting louder
Decrescendo or diminuendo (dim.): gradually getting softer
Sforzando (sfz): a sudden strong accent

Expression markings tell you how a note or passage should sound: smoothly connected, short and detached, or in a singing style. In other words, they say something about articulation and character, separate from tempo and volume. You’ll find them above or below the stave, often next to a tempo marking at the start of a piece.

Legato: smoothly connected, the notes flow into one another
Staccato: short and detached
Tenuto: hold the note for its full value
Marcato: marked, with emphasis
Cantabile: in a singing style
Dolce: sweet, gentle
Espressivo: expressive
Con brio: with fire
Fermata: hold a note or rest longer than written
Tutti: everyone plays

Small additions make every direction more precise. They rarely stand on their own, but strengthen or soften the term before or after them.

Molto: very, much
Poco: a little
Poco a poco: little by little
Più: more
Meno: less
Ma non troppo: but not too much
Sempre: always
Subito: suddenly

Allegro actually just means cheerful

Ask an Italian in the street what allegro means and they won’t say ‘fast’, but ‘cheerful’. The fact that the music world turned it into a tempo is a detour all of its own. The same goes for the rest of the list: presto is even faster than allegro, adagio is slow, andante is a walking pace, forte means strong or loud, and piano means soft. That last word, by the way, ended up in the name of an entire instrument (originally called the pianoforte).

Those original meanings still resonate today. A tempo marking doesn’t just tell you how fast, but also how it should feel. An adagio is quickly associated with sadness, an allegro with high spirits, and with allegro agitato the line between tempo and mood disappears altogether. It works just like ‘bake until golden brown’ in a recipe book: a single phrase that describes both the colour and how well done it is, without needing a number of minutes.

Sometimes the term even becomes the title. The best-known example is Barber’s Adagio for Strings, where the score goes one step further with molto adagio: very slow indeed. And if you think this only concerns classical musicians: arpeggio, playing the notes of a chord one after the other, is plain Italian too.

Beethoven, the metronome and the power of a number

You’d think the arrival of the metronome would have spelled the end of all that Italian. After all, a number is more precise than a word. Beethoven thought so too. After meeting Mälzel in 1817, he drew up metronome markings for his first eight symphonies and had them published in the Leipziger Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung. The Ninth didn’t exist yet, otherwise it would surely have been included as well.

Even so, the words didn’t disappear, and that makes sense when you consider what a number doesn’t tell you. A metronome marking gives the exact speed, whereas an Italian term says something about the speed but also about the character. It’s the difference between ‘twelve degrees’ in the weather forecast and the word ‘chilly’: the first is measurable, the second tells you how it feels. That’s why you’ll often see both in a score: a term followed by a number.

Not everyone played along nicely

Composers are a headstrong bunch, so plenty of them tried their own language instead. Debussy wrote his directions in French (Clair de lune is full of them) and Ravel did the same. Schumann opted for German. Mahler went all out with lengthy German directions in his symphonies, but even he couldn’t get rid of the Italian entirely. Above the first movement of his Sixth it says ‘Allegro energico, ma non troppo. Heftig, aber markig’. Two languages in one line, as if he couldn’t quite make up his mind either.

And that’s exactly why Italian still wins. An orchestra is international, and the Italian terms are the only ones everyone at the music stand can read without a dictionary. When they see adagio, the oboist from Prague and the bassist from Manchester know straight away what’s meant, whereas a French or German direction calls for a translation scribbled in the margin.