Tempo markings: from grave to prestissimo, with bpm

Two things at once: a speed and an attitude. Largo and adagio both mean slow, but largo asks for breadth and adagio for ease. Composers chose between them deliberately, and performers hear the difference even when the metronome number is identical.

The ranges overlap by design. What separates one marking from the next is not a boundary in beats per minute but the character of the music underneath, which is why the same tempo can be marked differently in two pieces and both be correct.

Grave — 20–40 bpm. Solemn, the slowest marking in common use.

Largo — 40–60. Broad and dignified.

Lento — 45–60. Slow, without largo's weight.

Adagio — 66–76. Slow and at ease; the tempo of many second movements.

Andante — 76–108. Walking pace, and the word means exactly that.

Moderato — 108–120. Moderate.

Allegretto — 112–120. A little lively, slower than allegro.

Allegro — 120–156. Fast and cheerful; the most common marking in the repertoire.

Vivace — 156–176. Lively.

Presto — 168–200. Very fast.

Prestissimo — 200 and above. As fast as playable.

Ranges vary between sources by a few beats — they are conventions, not measurements, and the numbers above follow the most widely cited tables.

Markings take qualifiers that adjust them without replacing them. Molto means very, poco a little, non troppo not too much, assai rather, ma non troppo but not too much.

So allegro ma non troppo is fast but held back, and adagio molto is very slow. The two most-quoted examples in music both use this construction, which shows how much of the instruction lives in the qualifier rather than the base word.

Con brio (with spirit), cantabile (singing), maestoso (majestic) attach character rather than speed. They are not tempo markings strictly, but they appear in the same place and shape the same decision.

Ritardando (rit.) and rallentando (rall.) both mean gradually slower; ritardando is the more common and slightly more gradual. Accelerando (accel.) means gradually faster.

A tempo cancels whatever change was in force and returns to the previous speed. Tempo primo returns to the tempo of the opening, which may be several changes back.

Rubato is different in kind: it asks for flexible timing within the phrase, borrowing time from one note and repaying it in another. It is an instruction to be human rather than to change speed.

A metronome mark looks like ♩ = 120: a note value, then how many of them fit in a minute. The note pictured matters — ♩ = 120 and ♪ = 120 are twice apart, and in compound time the mark is often given as a dotted quarter.

Beethoven was the first major composer to use them systematically, and his own numbers have been argued about ever since — evidence that the mark narrows the decision without settling it.

For practice, a metronome number is more useful than the Italian word, because it is checkable. For performance, the word carries what the number cannot: the character the composer asked for.

Tempo markings describe character as much as speed, and so do dynamics and articulation — the other family of Italian words on the page. How the beat is divided against that pulse is syncopation.