The Short

374 TEMPO TERMS
Cantabile
‘Cantabile’ was employed as a tempo direction in its own right, as a modifier of tempo, and as a term of expression.
Domenico Corri placed it in his third group of tempo terms along with ‘larghetto’, regarding it as faster than ‘adagio’
but slower than ‘andantino’. 717 Koch, too, explained that ‘cantabile’, used as a tempo direction, indicated a moderately
slow tempo. 718 Campagnoli, however, who regarded the term ‘larghetto’ as signifying a slower tempo than ‘adagio’, saw
it as even slower, placing it between ‘grave’ and ‘larghetto’, 719 and the Principes élémentaires de musique put it in the slowest
tempo category along with ‘grave’, ‘largo’, and ‘adagio’. 720 When used in conjunction with other terms it seems, like
‘sostenuto’, sometimes to have indicated a modification of the tempo and at other times simply to have specified a
singing style of performance. That Mozart may have considered ‘andante cantabile’ to indicate a slower tempo than
‘andante’ is implied by his modification of the tempo term of the slow movement of his String Quartet K. 465 from
‘Adagio’ to ‘Andante cantabile’. Beethoven, in the String Quartet op. 59 no. 1, seems to have been conscious that some
musicians might have regarded ‘cantabile’ as a modifier of tempo, but wished to indicate that he did not intend it to be
so in that case, for when he gave metronome marks to his string quartets he not only marked ? = 88 for the Adagio
molto e mesto at the beginning of the third movement, but also repeated the same metronome mark later in the
movement at the section marked ‘molto cantabile’, presumably to ensure that the players did not take this marking to
signify a new tempo. Whether Beethoven thought the players might take it slower or faster remains a moot point,
though it was most likely the former.
According to some English writers, ‘cantabile’ could also have a more specialized meaning in the late eighteenth
century and early nineteenth century. In 1771 Anselm Bayly complained in his Practical Treatise on Singing and Playing with
Just Expression and Real Elegance that ‘What are called cantabiles betray in general such a want of invention, and absurdity
of application, that they make the hearer sick before they are half finished.’ 721 Sometimes, as the anonymous author of
New Instructions for playing the Harpsichord (c.1790)observed, the term ‘cantabile’ ‘when set at the conclusion of an air
signifies an extempore cadence’; 722 and Dibdin, too, maintained in the first edition of hisMusic Epitomized that it
indicated the ‘introduction of extempore ideas gracefully’; this was changed by Jousse in the ninth edition to the simple
definition ‘in a singing style’, perhaps indicating that the earlier definition was by that time regarded as obsolete. 723
717
A Select Collection, i. 10.
718
Musikalisches Lexikon, art. ‘Cantabile’.
719
Nouvelle méthode, v. 10.
720
Gossec et al., Principes, 43.
721
(London, 1771), 65.
722
p. 36 .
723
1st edn., 67; 9th edn.,41.