Con stravaganza

As Printed on a Score

A character direction printed above the staff, usually inside a heading beside a tempo word — Scriabin’s Allegro. Impetuoso. Con stravaganza. It sets the manner of the section it heads and gives way to the next character word.

How Composers Use It

It licenses excess: exaggerated contrasts, sudden surges, the sense of music breaking its frame. That is why it sits naturally in late Romantic and Symbolist music like Scriabin’s, and why it needs a tempo word beside it — it says nothing about speed. Placed once, at a heading, it colours everything after; scattered through a score it loses its shock.

Example

Scriabin, Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53, m. 1: the sonata opens “Allegro. Impetuoso. Con stravaganza”, in an edition that also prints the epigraph from Scriabin’s Poème de l’extase.

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