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At a moderately quick pace.
An English tempo heading printed above the first system, often with a metronome figure; it holds until the next tempo word. It is common in twentieth-century English and American editions, especially of songs, where it stands for Allegro moderato.
It keeps momentum without the urgency of fast, which suits music whose interest lies in detail rather than speed. Both words are relative, so a metronome figure helps. If the music is dance-like or march-like, a character word may say more than another tempo qualifier: Moderately fast, with spirit.
Moderately fast 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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