Ritardando

What it means

Ritardando comes from ritardare, “to delay,” and calls for a gradual slowing down. Abbreviated it appears as rit. or ritard. The delay is a process: it begins at the notated point and leads, over a stretch of a few notes up to several bars, into a slower tempo.

Compared with rallentando there is no binding difference in meaning; both words are used interchangeably by many composers. Where a distinction is made at all, ritardando counts as the even pulling back of the pulse, rallentando as the broader running-out that also makes the tone production heavier. Clearly to be distinguished, by contrast, is ritenuto: there the pulling back happens immediately, not gradually. Because both can be abbreviated as rit., misunderstandings often arise here — when in doubt, the context helps, for a ritenuto usually concerns only a short turn.

In the notation

The word or abbreviation stands in italics above the staff. For a longer effect, many editions carry along a dashed line or a series of hyphens to its end. The delay is ended by a tempo, tempo primo, or a new tempo marking; if such a marking is absent, it ends with the section.

Musical use

Ritardando stands predominantly at section boundaries: before the end of a movement, before a fermata, before the transition into a calmer part. It announces that something is coming to an end and creates room for the closing turn. In nineteenth-century music it additionally appears within phrases, to bring out individual turns. How far the delay goes, the notation does not prescribe.

Performance practice

Determine where you want to arrive before you begin — otherwise you become too slow too early. Distribute the delay evenly over the available note values and think it in steps: every beat a little longer than the previous one. Let the notes keep sounding as you do; if the tone thins along with the tempo, the passage seems like getting stuck. In ensemble, take your bearings from the voice with the smallest note movement, for there the stretching becomes audible first.