Rather

What it means

Ziemlich is a German grading word and is added to a tempo or performance marking to determine its degree: “ziemlich langsam” (fairly slow), “ziemlich lebhaft” (fairly lively), “ziemlich bewegt” (fairly animated). It lies between the softening etwas (somewhat) and the intensifying sehr (very).

The meaning is not entirely unambiguous and depends on context. In today's usage, “ziemlich” mostly means “quite, to a considerable degree”, that is, a slight intensification. In older German it could also mean “appropriate, fitting”. For musical practice, today's reading is authoritative: “ziemlich langsam” is distinctly slow, but not as slow as “sehr langsam”.

There is no Italian equivalent in the same form; closest are phrases with assai in a weakened sense, or additions such as abbastanza.

In the notation

The word stands together with the base word above the staff at the beginning of a movement or section and becomes part of the heading. It is encountered especially in works marked consistently in German.

Musical use

German tempo and performance markings with finely graded additions become more frequent in the nineteenth century. Individual composers mark whole works exclusively in German and use words such as ziemlich, etwas, nicht zu, and sehr to express gradations for which the Italian vocabulary offers fewer possibilities.

The German instruction softens a marking slightly, for instance ziemlich langsam or ziemlich lebhaft. It corresponds to the Italian assai in the sense of “enough” or abbastanza and stands in German Romantic scores, especially in Schumann and Mahler. Ziemlich therefore does not mean “very” but a medium degree: ziemlich langsam is slower than moderate, but not fully slow. It holds to take the gradation seriously and not to over

Performance practice

Place the marking on the scale: it lies above the unintensified base word and below “sehr”. Compare it with other markings in the same work, to determine the degree. And maintain the chosen degree through the whole section.