Interlude: Musical Terms
Musical Terms are Directions
Music can be loud or soft; notes can be short or long or anywhere in
between; a musical phrase can be played sweetly or crassly, smoothly or
choppily; and music can be played at many different speeds from sleepily
slow to furiously fast.
The performer needs to know this information, and in most music the
information is written in Italian.Why Italian?
Way back when, beginning in the late 1500’s, there was a lot of music-
making going on in Italy, and at the time, some bright soul thought to
write these detailed instructions on the music. Because the composers
were Italian, the instructions were written in, you guessed it, Italian.
You’ll occasionally see some terms in German and French and even
English (especially if you play a piece by Percy Grainger), but the vast
majority of musical terms are in Italian.
Following are many Italian terms that are applied to music. They’re
grouped by category: tempos (how fast to go), dynamics (how loud or
soft to play, articulations (how short or long a note is), general terms,
and terms for special types of repeats.Tempo
Tempo is an Italian word which comes from the Latin tempus which
means time.
In order to understand these tempos (some people say tempi for the
plural), we’ll refer to the metronome and how many beats per minute
each tempo is. To review the metronome, see “The Metronome (or: The
Torture Device)” on page 152. Most metronomes have these markings
listed somewhere on them.