Animando

What it means

Animando comes from animare, “to animate”, and calls for animating the music increasingly from the notated point. This includes a quickening but does not mean only that: along with the tempo the intensity of the sound as a rule also grows.

Animando and animato are to be distinguished. The ending -ando denotes a process, that is a becoming-animated; animato, by contrast, is a state and calls for playing the section animated from the outset. Whoever equates the two takes from an intensification its direction.

Against accelerando, which means the pure increase of tempo, animando has the warmer, expression-related overtone. Stringendo in turn stresses the drawing together and pressing, often with a pull toward the oppressive. The boundaries are fluid and are handled differently by composers.

In the notation

The word stands in italics above the staff and holds from that point, frequently over a short stretch of a few bars. A dashed line can prolong the effect. The end is marked by a tempo, tempo primo or a new tempo marking; often the animating also leads directly into a new, faster section.

Musical use

The marking stands in transitions and intensifications where the music comes into motion out of calm. It is widespread in the music of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which tempo is freely handled as a means of expression. In opera and song it frequently marks a turn in the text at which the agitation grows.

Performance practice

Begin the animating out of the existing tempo, without a break, and let it run across the whole indicated stretch. Join tempo and sound: at the same time become somewhat denser in tone, or the passage seems merely faster, not livelier. Settle where the intensification arrives, and space out the way there. In an ensemble it helps to name the target point together — on the way there, agreement on the goal matters more than on each intermediate step.