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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo
Tempo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In musical terminology, tempo [tmpo] ("time" in Italian; plural: tempi [tmpi]) is the speed or
pace of a given piece or subsection thereof, how fast or slow. Tempo is related to meter and is
usually measured by beats per minute, with the beats being a division of the measures, though
tempo is often indicated by terms which have acquired standard ranges of beats per minute or
assumed by convention without indication. Tempo may be separated from articulation, or
articulation may be indicated along with tempo, and tempo contributes to the overall texture. While
the ability to hold a steady tempo is a desirable skill, tempo is changeable, and often indicated by a
conductor or drummer. While practicing, an electronic or mechanical device, a metronome, may
indicate the tempo, as one usually works one's way up to being able to perform at the proper tempo.
In other words it is the speed at which a passage of music is or should be played.
Contents
1
2
3
4
Measuring tempo
Musical vocabulary for tempo
Understood tempo
Beats per minute
4.1 Extreme tempos
4.2 Beatmatching
5 Measures per minute
6 Italian tempo markings
6.1 Basic tempo markings
6.1.1 Additional terms
6.2 Common qualifiers
6.3 Mood markings with a tempo connotation
6.4 Terms for change in tempo
7 Tempo markings in other languages
7.1 French tempo markings
7.2 German tempo markings
7.3 English tempo markings
8 Tempo markings as movement names and compositions with a tempo indicator name
9 See also
10 References
11 Sources
12 External links
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Measuring tempo
A piece of music's tempo is typically written at the start of the score,
and in modern Western 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 that the amount of time
between successive beats is a specified fraction of a minute. The
greater the number of beats per minute, the smaller the amount of
time between successive beats, and thus faster a piece must be
played. For example, a tempo of 60 beats per minute signifies one
beat per second, while a tempo of 120 beats per minute is twice as
rapid, signifying one beat every 0.5 seconds. Mathematical tempo
markings of this kind became increasingly popular during the first
Electronic metronome,
half of the 19th century, after the metronome had been invented by
Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, although early metronomes were
Wittner model
somewhat inconsistent. Beethoven was one of the first composers to
use the metronome; in the 1810s he published metronomic
indications for the eight symphonies he had composed up to that time. [1]
With the advent of modern electronics, bpm became an extremely precise measure. Music
sequencers use the bpm system to denote tempo.
Instead of beats per minute, some 20th-century composers (e.g., Bla Bartk, Alberto Ginastera,
and John Cage) specify the total playing time for a piece, from which the performer can derive
tempo.
Tempo is as crucial in contemporary music as it is in classical. In electronic dance music, accurate
knowledge of a tune's bpm is important to DJs for the purposes of beatmatching.
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Gershwin's piano concerto in F has both a tempo indication (undoubtedly faster than a usual
Allegro) and a mood indication ("agitated").
Understood tempo
In some cases (quite often up to the end of the Baroque period), the conventions that governed
musical composition were so strong that composers didn't need to indicate tempo. 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, performers understood most music to flow at a tempo defined by the tactus
(roughly the rate of the human heartbeat).[4] The mensural time signature indicated which note
value corresponded to the tactus.
Often a particular musical form or genre implies its own tempo, so composers need place no further
explanation in the score. Thus, musicians expect a minuet to be at a fairly stately tempo, slower
than a Viennese waltz; a perpetuum mobile quite fast, and so on. Genres imply tempos. Thus,
Ludwig van Beethoven wrote "In tempo d'un Menuetto" over the first movement of his Piano
Sonata Op. 54, though that movement is not a minuet. Popular music charts use terms such as bossa
nova, ballad, and Latin rock in much the same way.
Note that not only did tempos change over historical time and even in different places, but
sometimes even the ordering of terms changed. For example, a modern largo is slower than an
adagio, but in the Baroque period it was faster.[5]
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Exotic time and particularly slow time signatures may indicate their bpm tempo using other note
durations. bpm became common terminology in disco because of its usefulness to DJs, and remain
important in the same genre and other dance music.
In this context the beats measured are either quarter
notes in the time signature (sometimes ambiguously
called down-beats), or drum beats (typically
120 bpm tempo
bass-drum or another functionally similar synthesized
sound), whichever is more frequent. Higher bpm
Problems playing this file? See media help.
values are therefore achievable by increasing the
number of drum beats, without increasing the tempo
of the music. House music is faster around 120128 bpm (from regular house music to UK garage),
trance music ranges from 125 to 150 bpm,[6] and drum and bass generally ranges between
150180 bpm. Psytrance is almost exclusively produced at 145 bpm, whereas Gabber can exceed
180220 bpm. Speedcore can exceed 200 -1000+ bpm.
120 bpm tempo
Extreme tempos
More extreme tempos are achievable at the same underlying tempo with very fast drum patterns,
often expressed as drum rolls. Such compositions often exhibit a much slower underlying tempo,
but may increase the tempo by adding additional percussive beats. Extreme music subgenres such
as speedcore and grindcore often strive to reach unusually fast tempos. The use of extreme tempo
was very common in the fast bebop jazz from the 1940s and 1950s. A common jazz tune such as
"Cherokee" was often performed at quarter note equal to or sometimes exceeding 368 bpm. Some
of Charlie Parker's famous tunes ("Bebop", "Shaw Nuff") have been performed at 380 bpm plus.
John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" was performed at 374 bpm.
Beatmatching
Beat-matching is a technique DJs use that involves speeding up or slowing down a record to match
the tempo of a previous track so both can be seamlessly mixed.
DJs often beatmatch the underlying tempos of recordings, rather than their strict bpm value
suggested by the kick drum, particularly when dealing with high tempo tracks. A 240 bpm track,
for example, matches the beat of a 120 bpm track without slowing down or speeding up, because
both have an underlying tempo of 120 quarter notes per minute. Thus, some soul music (around
7590 bpm) mixes well with a drum and bass beat (from 150185 bpm).
When speeding up or slowing down a record on a turntable, the pitch and tempo of a track are
linked: spinning a disc 10% faster makes both pitch and tempo 10% higher. Software processing to
change the pitch without changing the tempo, or vice versa, is called time-stretching or pitchshifting. While it works fairly well for small adjustments ( 20%), the result can be noisy and
unmusical for larger changes.
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Common qualifiers
alla in the manner or style of, as in:
alla breve in short style, i.e., duple time, with the half note (minim) rather than the
4
quarter note (crotchet) as the beat; cut time; 2
2 instead of 4; often marked as (see Time
signature)
alla marcia in the manner of a march[12] (e.g., Beethoven, op. 101)
all' ongarese in Hungarian style
alla (danza) tedesca in the style of the Lndler (c. 1800), and similar dances in rather
quick triple meter (see Beethoven, op. 79, op. 130)[13]
alla turca in the Turkish style, that is, in imitation of Turkish military music (Janissary
Music), which became popular in Europe in the late 18th century (e.g., Mozart, K. 331,
K. 384)
alla zingarese in the style of Gypsy music
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Meno mosso appears in large type above the staff, it functions as a new tempo, and thus implies an
immediate change.) Several terms, e.g., assai, molto, poco, subito, control how large and how
gradual a change should be (see common qualifiers).
After a tempo change, a composer may return to a previous tempo in two different ways:
a tempo returns to the base tempo after an adjustment (e.g. ritardando ... a tempo undoes the
effect of the ritardando).
Tempo primo or Tempo Io denotes an immediate return to the piece's original base tempo
after a section in a different tempo (e.g. Allegro ... Lento ... Moderato ... Tempo Io indicates a
return to the Allegro). This indication often functions as a structural marker in pieces in
binary form.
These terms also indicate an immediate, not a gradual, tempo change. Although they are Italian,
composers typically use them even if they have written their initial tempo marking in some other
language.
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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 is 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 Bartk in Allegro barbaro ("barbaric Allegro"), a single movement composition.
See also
A capriccio
Alla breve
As Slow as Possible
Bell pattern
Half-time (music)
Multitemporal music
Stop-time
References
1. Some of these markings are today contentious, such as those on his "Hammerklavier" Sonata and Ninth
Symphony, seeming to many to be almost impossibly fast, as is also the case for many of the works of
Schumann. See "metronome" entry in Apel (1969), p. 523.
2. Randel, D., ed., The New Harvard Dictionary of Music, Harvard University Press, 1986, Tempo
3. Randel, ed., 1986, Metronome
4. Haar, James. The Science and Art of Renaissance Music. Princeton University Press. p. 408.
ISBN 1-40-086471-2.
5. music theory online: tempo (http://www.dolmetsch.com/musictheory5.htm), Dolmetsch.com
6. Snoman (2009), p. 251.
7. American Symphony Orchestra League (1998). Journal of the Conductors' Guild, Vols. 1819. Viena:
The League. p. 27. ISSN 0734-1032 (https://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0734-1032)
8. William E. Caplin; James Hepokoski; James Webster (2010). Musical Form, Forms & Formenlehre:
Three Methodological Reflections. Leuven University Press. p. 80. ISBN 905-867-822-9.
9. Apel (1969), p. 42; for the literal translation see the online ItalianEnglish dictionary at
WordReference.com.
10. "Istesso tempo" entry in Sadie (2001).
11. For a modern example of L'istesso, see measures 4 and 130 of Star Wars: Main Title, Williams (1997),
pp. 3 and 30.
12. Apel (1969), p. 505.
13. Apel (1969), p. 834.
14. Apel (1969), p. 61.
15. Online ItalianEnglish dictionary at WordReference.com.
16. Apel (1969), p. 112.
17. The American History and Encyclopedia of Music, W.L. Hubbard (ed.); c. 1908
18. Apel (1969), p. 334.
19. Apel (1969), p. 520.
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Sources
Books on tempo in music:
Epstein, David (1995). Shaping Time: Music, the Brain, and Performance. New York:
Schirmer Books. ISBN 0-02-873320-7.
Marty, Jean-Pierre (1988). The tempo indications of Mozart. New Haven: Yale University
Press. ISBN 0-300-03852-6.
Sachs, Curt (1953). Rhythm and Tempo: A Study in Music History. New York: Norton.
OCLC 391538.
Snoman, Rick (2009). The Dance Music Manual: Tools, Toys, and Techniques Second
Edition. Oxford, UK: Elsevier Press. ISBN 0-9748438-4-9.
Music dictionaries:
Apel, Willi, ed., Harvard Dictionary of Music, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1969. ISBN
978-0-674-37501-7
Sadie, Stanley; John Tyrrell, eds. (2001). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians,
2nd edition. NewYork: Grove's Dictionaries. ISBN 1-56159-239-0.
Examples of musical scores:
Williams, John (1997). Star Wars: Suite for Orchestra. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard Corp.
ISBN 978-0-793-58208-2.
External links
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