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Noisily and with high spirits.
Printed above the first staff as a heading, or over a passage, in English-language scores. It sets character and implies a lively tempo until a new heading or tempo word appears.
It asks for rowdy high spirits: loud, energetic, rough-edged delivery with heavy accents and a deliberately unrefined swagger. Because it gives no speed, add a tempo indication if one matters. Warlock heads a song with it and then raises the pace in two plain-English steps, Rather faster and Still faster — a model for building excitement without Italian terms.
Warlock, Peterisms, Set 1, “Rutterkin”, voice, m. 1: “Boisterously”, the song’s heading; “Rather faster” and “Still faster” follow at mm. 24 and 26.
Boisterously is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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