Loading…
Loading…
Fast and cheerful.
Printed above the first staff as a heading in English-language scores, standing in for an Italian tempo word such as Allegro vivace. It governs until a new tempo heading.
Gay is used in its older sense — cheerful and lively — the counterpart of the French gai and of allegro in its original meaning. Warlock heads a song with it, combining speed and character in plain English. Modern readers may misread the word, so a composer writing today might choose merrily or lively instead; in historical scores, read it as cheerful.
Warlock, Peterisms, Set 2, “Lusty Juventus”, voice, m. 1: “Fast and gay”, the song’s heading.
Fast and gay 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.
Browse the full dictionary →