The Short

TEMPO TERMS 337
suggest that, in some places at least, early nineteenth-century composers and performers saw ‘allegro’ as indicating a
substantially faster tempo than did those of the mid- to late nineteenth century.
Theorists, trying to make sense of a host of evident discrepancies in practice, chose a number of different courses.
Some, particularly in the eighteenth century, regarded many of these terms as primarily describing expression, or
signifying a particular mode of execution, rather than tempo; some grouped them in more or less broad categories;
some explicitly recognized divergent usages;others simply contented themselves with prescribing a hierarchy of tempo
terms without comment. A few writers attempted to fix chronometric tempos or tempo ranges for the various terms,
but in most cases these provide little useful information, since by giving nothing but tempo term and metronome mark
they failed to compare like with like.
The confusion and complexity that cloud this matter at every stage may be illustrated by the contrasting approaches of
two British writers, William Crotch and John Jousse, in the early nineteenth century. Crotch proposed the following list
of tempo terms in ascending order of speed: grave, largo, larghetto, adagio, lento, andante, allegretto, allegro, vivace,
alla breve, presto, prestissimo; but he admitted that there were those who regarded adagio, lento, andante, alla breve,
and vivace ‘rather as terms of expression and taste, than of time’. He further observed that some considered ‘adagio’ to
indicate a slower tempo than ‘largo’and that others thought ‘andantino’ called for a slower one than
‘andante’. 617 Jousse's A Compendious Musical Grammar (1825), an English translation of Bonifazio Asioli‘s Principj
elementari di musica, nicely illustrates the gulf which separated English and Continental musicians in this matter. Asioli's
list gave the order: largo, grave, larghetto, adagio, andantino, il tempo giusto, tempo di minuetto, andante, allegretto,
allegro, presto prestissimo, but Jousse appended a footnote saying: ‘The above description, which the French have
adopted, is according to the Italian school; in England the following order is generally adopted: I) Grave 2) Adagio 3)
Largo 4) Larghetto 5) Andante 6) Andantino 7) Maestoso 8)Allegretto 9) Allegro 10) Vivace 11) Presto 12)
Prestissimo’. 618
In this respect, as in many others, the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first of the nineteenth were a
period of transition. More conservative writers in the 1770s could still adhere primarily to the notion of these
conventional Italian words as terms of expression, with a secondary connotation for tempo. Löhlein in 1774, for
instance, explained them as indicating ‘the ruling character [Affekt] of a piece’, and listed them with more or less literal
translations into German, which, in many cases, make no direct reference to speed. In his subsequent discussion of the
meaning the performer should
617 ‘Remarks on the Terms at Present Used in Music, for Regulating the Time’, Monthly Magazine, 8 (1800), 941–3.
618 A Compendious Musical Grammar, III.