IT rallentando tempo modification core term Support my free tools
- Abbreviation
- rall.
How is rallentando played?
Slow progressively over the marked passage, with successive bars or phrases broadening toward a new tempo or a later a tempo. Rallentando changes the pulse by degrees rather than establishing a fixed BPM; its destination is set by a tempo, another tempo direction, or the phrase itself. Ritenuto can imply a more immediate or uniform holding back, allargando adds breadth and weight, and calando, morendo and smorzando combine slowing with a dynamic fade. Some performers hear rallentando as more deliberate than ritardando, but that distinction is interpretive rather than fixed.
How does rallentando sound?
The music gradually relaxes its drive, typically reading as a broad, expressive winding-down toward a phrase-end or close.
In context
Grove says that rallentando and ritardando are used near-interchangeably for a gradual reduction of speed, while its stricter account of ritenuto describes a uniform slower rate, illustrated by Beethoven's String Quartet Op. 131 and Chopin's Rondo Op. 16. Rallentando is rarely found before the nineteenth century, and contradictory definitions of the pair have persisted throughout their history. Publisher, conservatory and glossary sources consistently support rall.; any finer expressive difference from ritardando must come from the surrounding score rather than the word alone.