Beklemmt
Constricted, melancholy.
What it means
Beklemmt is a German performance marking and calls for a constricted, oppressed expression. The music should seem as though it lacks room: a held-back tone, inhibited motion, an expression of distress.
The marking differs from the words for grief and pain — schwermütig, doloroso — through the constriction: there the music laments, here it holds itself in. From verhalten, which means restraint in general, it differs through the negative colouring.
Like all German character words, the term is not strictly defined. It explains the composer’s intention and leaves the means to the performer.
In the notation
The word stands above the staff at the beginning of the section concerned and holds until a new marking. It is frequently found together with quiet dynamics, narrow melodic lines, chromatic turns and an accompaniment that restricts the space for motion — for instance through unchanging figures or sustained notes.
Musical use
The designation is used in sections that depict a state of inner distress: in songs with a corresponding text, in middle sections of character pieces, in chamber-music movements of tense expression. It belongs to that group of German performance words with which nineteenth-century composers wished to fix the expression more precisely than the Italian terms allowed.
The instruction stands above all in the music of Romanticism and the early twentieth century; it is known from Beethoven’s String Quartet op. 130, in whose Cavatina a passage is headed beklemmt. It calls for an oppressed, hesitant tone that seems spoken as if against an inner resistance. Short phrases, small rests and drawn-back loudness help to strike this character.
Performance practice
Draw the tone back without making it small: constriction arises from held tension, not from feebleness. Keep the tempo rather steady and avoid generous stretching; it is precisely the lack of freedom that belongs to the expression. Work out chromatic turns and dissonances clearly. And keep the dynamics within narrow bounds — large arcs contradict the intended character.