Rallentando

What it means

Rallentando comes from the Italian rallentare, “to slow down,” and calls for the tempo to be pulled back little by little. Abbreviated it appears as rall. The slowing is conceived as a process: it begins where the word stands and leads, over several notes or bars, to a distinctly slower tempo.

The distinction from the almost synonymous ritardando (rit.) is a matter of tradition, not of definition. Both words designate a gradual slowing down, and many composers use them interchangeably. Where a distinction is made at all, ritardando counts rather as the even pulling back of the pulse, rallentando rather as a broader running-out that also makes the tone production heavier. This distinction is not reliable — what remains decisive is the musical context. Clearly separated from this is ritenuto: there the tempo is pulled back immediately, not gradually.

In the notation

The word or abbreviation stands above the staff, in italics, and applies from this point. If the slowing extends over a longer stretch, many editions draw a dashed line or a series of hyphens to its end. The end itself is marked by a tempo, tempo primo, or a new tempo marking; if such a marking is absent, the effect ends at the latest with the section.

Musical use

Rallentando stands predominantly before section boundaries: at the end of a movement, before a fermata, before the transition into a calmer part. It signals to the listener that something is coming to an end and creates room for the closing turn. In the nineteenth century it becomes one of the most used expressive means of all and is also found in the middle of phrases, to bring out individual turns. How strongly the slowing is to be, the notation does not prescribe; the range reaches from barely perceptible yielding to a halving of the tempo.

Performance practice

Plan where the rallentando is to arrive before you begin it — otherwise you become too slow too early and have to stretch the last bars artificially. Distribute the slowing evenly over the available note values and think it in steps: every beat a little longer than the previous one. In ensemble, take your bearings from the voice with the smallest note movement, for there the stretching becomes audible first. And let the notes keep sounding as you do: a rallentando in which the tone thins seems like getting stuck rather than like breathing out.