Incalzando

What it means

Incalzando comes from incalzare, “to pursue, to press hard,” and calls for a quickening that carries the character of pursuit. The music does not merely become quicker, it seems driven, as if pushed from behind. As a rule, intensity grows along with the tempo.

It differs from the neighbouring words in colouring, not in process. Accelerando designates the acceleration neutrally. Stringendo means a drawing together in which tension increases and which often leads into a climax. Affrettando stresses the hurry, the hasty. Incalzando lies closest to stringendo but has more strongly the overtone of pursuing and pressing. Composers do not handle these differences uniformly; the musical context decides.

In the notation

The word is written in italics above the staff and applies from this point, usually over a manageable stretch. Often a crescendo hairpin is added, because the pressing is almost always connected with an increase in volume. The effect is ended by a tempo, a new tempo marking, or the entry of the section that was being steered toward.

Musical use

The marking stands in intensification passages, in developments, and in dramatic sections of the opera and song literature in which a situation comes to a head. It is rarer than accelerando and therefore acts like an exclamation mark: where it stands, a special expression is meant. It is widespread above all in the Italian music of the nineteenth century.

It acts like stringendo. Verdi and Puccini use it often.

Performance practice

Let the pressing arise from the motion: begin still in the old tempo and then quicken continuously instead of becoming faster at once. Connect tempo and sound, otherwise the passage seems merely hurried. Take care that the notes keep their duration despite the pressure — the most common weakness is a shortening that makes the passage sound nervous instead of pressing. And fix the goal point: a pressing needs a goal, otherwise it loses its direction.