IT allargando tempo modification common Support my free tools
- Abbreviation
- allarg.
How is allargando played?
Widen the pulse and the phrase progressively so the music gains breadth as it slows. Added weight, fullness or a crescendo often accompanies this gesture at climaxes and cadences, but the word itself does not replace a written dynamic: follow the score if volume must change. Compared with a plain ritardando or rallentando, allargando emphasizes expansion and grandeur; unlike calando, morendo or smorzando, it does not require the sound to fade. It may overlap with ritardando in practice. Let the broadening develop to the arrival, target tempo, a tempo, Tempo I or another instruction rather than imposing a fixed percentage or BPM change.
How does allargando sound?
The music seems to open out and gather grandeur as it slows, an expansive, weighty broadening most associated with climaxes and emphatic endings.
In context
Italian and French reference sources define allargando as a progressive broadening and slowing, and identify en élargissant as its French counterpart. The term entered the established nineteenth-century change-of-tempo vocabulary and is especially useful at cadences, climaxes and perorations where a mere loss of speed would be too neutral. The Royal Conservatory, Cambridge Dictionary and an independent performance-practice study document allarg.; any added loudness remains a contextual choice rather than an automatic rule.