Serioso

As Printed on a Score

Printed above the staff as a character word, alone or after a tempo word, at the head of a movement or section, and governing mood until the next heading. Beethoven attached it with ma to a fast tempo heading, a common way of qualifying a tempo word’s usual character.

How Composers Use It

Serioso asks for seriousness: weight, concentration and restraint, with no playfulness in articulation or rubato. It is most striking when it contradicts a movement’s expected mood; Beethoven’s ma serioso on a fast, scherzo-like movement keeps it from sounding light. Use it to forbid the lightness a tempo word or genre might suggest; on music that is already grave it adds little.

Example

Beethoven, String Quartet No. 11 in F minor, Op. 95, third movement: headed “Allegro assai vivace ma serioso”.

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