DE sehr langsam tempo common Support my free tools
How is sehr langsam played?
Take a very slow tempo—deeper than ordinary langsam—while keeping subdivision, phrase and harmonic direction intelligible. Sehr intensifies the base word but does not convert it into a fixed metronome range. Mahler’s Adagietto. Sehr langsam and Schumann’s complete Sehr langsam headings in Kreisleriana show the phrase operating as a real score instruction rather than an ornamental translation. In Brucknerian contexts the result can be deep, broad, monumental or ceremonial, but those qualities come from the surrounding music and added character words, not from sehr langsam alone. Maintain the chosen pace until another instruction.
How does sehr langsam sound?
Deep, broad slowness; in Bruckner often monumental and ceremonial.
Sehr langsam is just sehr, very, sharpening langsam, which sharpens the character without fixing a number. It's the heading of the Adagietto in Mahler's Fifth Symphony, and the Mahler Foundation's own listening guide is careful to treat it as qualitative — not a number implied by the movement's diminutive title, whatever a conductor's favourite recording might suggest.
In context
Duden establishes langsam as a low-speed word, and score sources print the intensified phrase in full: Mahler uses Adagietto. Sehr langsam in Symphony No. 5, while Schumann uses Sehr langsam in Kreisleriana. The evidence supports “very slow” and “deep, broad slowness” while treating Brucknerian monumentality or ceremony as context-dependent. No universal BPM or stable general abbreviation was established, so sehr langsam remains written out.
Equivalent terms
- IT molto adagio
- IT molto lento
- FR très lent
- EN very slow
- DA meget langsomt