DE immer langsamer tempo common Support my free tools
How is immer langsamer played?
Keep reducing the tempo progressively, so each successive stage is slower than the one before. The baseline’s “further and further” and “continuous, cumulative slowing” describe the core action: unlike langsam, which establishes a slow state, immer langsamer keeps the tempo changing. Compared with a single ritardando, the renewed comparative wording often sustains the process conspicuously across a passage, but the score, phrase length and destination mark determine the exact curve and duration. Do not add an automatic diminuendo or character change. Continue until a new tempo, an explicit destination or the end of the marked span.
How does immer langsamer sound?
A continuous, cumulative slowing — more sustained than a single ritardando.
Immer langsamer, slower and slower, marks an open-ended deceleration rather than a fixed destination — the same family as allmählich langsamer, but with no implied endpoint at all. Mahler uses the same "immer plus comparative" construction elsewhere too, as in "immer breiter" (always broader, meaning slower). A word built to keep changing was never going to hold still long enough for a metronome mark.
In context
Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 prints Immer langsamer as a complete tempo instruction, and Duden’s treatment of langsam and its comparative supports the literal process “slower and slower.” The marking therefore describes a continuous, cumulative deceleration rather than a fixed slower tempo. It may cover a broader or more insistent span than one local ritardando, as the baseline notes, but it gives no universal BPM, percentage or duration. No stable general abbreviation was established, so the phrase remains written out.
Equivalent terms
- IT sempre più lento
- FR de plus en plus lent
- EN slower and slower
- DA stadig langsommere