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How is senza tempo played?
Release the passage from a single regular tempo and shape its pacing through phrasing, breath, dramatic delivery or any durations supplied by the composer. The marking can occur in recitative-like or cadenza-like writing, free introductions and modern ametric or graphic notation, but it does not by itself erase every barline or prescribe timing in seconds. Senza misura literally concerns measured organisation and is related but not interchangeable; the two directions can even occur separately in the same work. Continue freely until the notation restores a tempo, a battuta, a metronome mark or otherwise re-establishes measured motion.
How does senza tempo sound?
The music loses its metronomic grid and acquires a speaking, improvisatory quality, closer to the free rhythm of chant or prose than to the regular pulse of metred music.
Senza tempo means exactly what it says: without tempo. It asks a performer to set aside strict metrical pulse and play with rhythmic freedom, which makes a BPM a contradiction in terms here rather than a missing data point.
In context
Grove records Schumann’s Humoreske with the right hand marked Come senza tempo while the left hand remains in tempo, proving that freedom can be layered rather than global; the same entry notes that Verdi’s Requiem uses both senza misura and senza tempo. Riemann describes the phrase as free in tempo, especially in recitative-like passages. In Gísli Magnússon’s 2020 score Skuggaljós, one specifically labelled Senza tempo procedure removes time signatures and gives durations in seconds, while a separate “Free time” procedure lets instruments proceed independently. Chant, recitative, some graphic or aleatory music and shakuhachi honkyoku can offer analogies for free rhythm, but they are not definitions or synonyms for the Italian instruction. Historical s. T. is rejected because the live lexicon already uses s.t. for sul tasto.