Lento assai

As Printed on a Score

Printed above the staff as a movement heading or at the start of a slow section, and in force until the next tempo word. In larger single-movement works it may return several times, re-marked each time the slow material comes back.

How Composers Use It

Very slow: Lento intensified, suited to stark, sparse textures — isolated notes, quiet chords, long silences. Liszt opens his B-minor Sonata with it and returns to it at the close, and Beethoven headed the slow movement of his last string quartet “Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo”. The marking stresses slowness itself rather than breadth or weight, so it works best with music that is deliberately bare.

Example

Liszt, Ballade No. 2 in B minor, m. 20: “Lento assai”, arriving after a “molto rit” at p, with “una corda” two bars later.

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