Allmählich schneller: meaning and use in music

How is allmählich schneller played?

Build the tempo progressively from the pulse already in force. Allmählich means “gradually” or “little by little,” while schneller is the comparative “faster,” so the phrase describes a process rather than an immediate new tempo; it does not itself require a crescendo or a more agitated character. Functionally it is the German-language counterpart of accelerando, but the score decides how far, how quickly and with what phrasing the acceleration develops. German composers can combine such precise vernacular clauses with Italian terms or use them independently; read both parts of the phrase rather than reducing it to a borrowed abbreviation. Continue to the marked target, a tempo, Tempo I or another instruction.

How does allmählich schneller sound?

A measured, progressive quickening — the same controlled gathering of pace as a written-out accelerando.

Allmählich schneller is the mirror image: gradually faster, the German accelerando. It shares its logic with allmählich langsamer and resists a number for the same reason — it names a rate of change, not the tempo you land on at the end of it.

In context

Wagner’s Das Rheingold provides direct primary-score evidence for Allmählich schneller, while Mahler critical-edition and performance sources document the broader German-language vocabulary of comparative and gradual motion. The wording is a transparent construction—gradually plus faster—and therefore gives direction without numeric precision. It belongs beside accelerando, drängend and etwas bewegter in the wider toolkit, but it differs from the latter two by explicitly naming a gradual tempo increase. No stable general abbreviation was established, so the complete phrase remains the public notation.

Equivalent terms

• IT accelerando
• FR en accélérant
• EN gradually faster
• DA gradvist hurtigere