Loading…
Loading…
The pace of the music; as a bare word it asks for the main tempo (like a tempo).
As a bare word above the staff — Tempo, sometimes with a full stop — it marks the return to the tempo after a rit., pause or local slowing, exactly like a tempo. It also forms compounds: Tempo I, Erstes Tempo, Tempo wie zu Anfang, Haupttempo.
Wolf, Cornelius, Mahler and Schoenberg print a bare Tempo where Italian scores say a tempo. It points back to the governing tempo of the section, not necessarily to the opening — for that, use Tempo I. Place it at the exact beat where the pulse resumes.
Mahler, Symphony No. 5, second movement, flutes, m. 254: “Tempo.”, at ff two bars after a poco rit.
Tempo 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 →