Why Italian?

(entry for 7/19/2024)

One thing you’ve probably noticed by now is that a lot of the words associated with music are in Italian. Also, as you found out in the last two posts (if you didn’t already know), two important figures in the history of music notation, Guido d’Arezzo and Ugolindo da Fonti, were both Italian.

The words ‘forte’ and ‘piano,’ meaning loud and soft, are both Italian.  (A pianoforte or fortepiano is a keyboard string instrument capable of playing either loudly or softy, which the previous clavichords and harpsichords were not. We call the pianoforte a 'piano,' for short. But a good one can certainly make a loud noise, in spite of its nickname!)  All the volume markings in use today are based on Italian words. Tempo indications, like Allegro, Andante, Largo, Vivace, and Presto, are all Italian.

Any list of the first twenty or so famous classical composers of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries will be at least half Italians: Palestrina, Montevedi, Clementi, Scarlatti, Vivaldi—all Italian. In fact the first really important classical composer who wasn’t Italian was Johann Sebastian Bach, and he wasn’t born till 1685!

What’s going on here? The country we now know as Italy wasn’t even formed till March of 1861! How can a non-existent country be the source of so much that is musical?

One of the theories I’ve heard is that the Italian language is more musical than most other languages, as the vowel sounds are easier to sing. I would agree that it is easier to sing in Italian than it is in German, French, or English.  However, I think Spanish and Portuguese are equally as easy (and as melodic) as Italian, and there are probably other languages that I don’t know about that would serve as well. So why not Spanish, for example? Why Italian?

I have a theory. No proof, no real evidence, just a theory, but I think it’s just as good as many other theories and perhaps even better than some. I think we can thank the Roman Catholic Church.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that the Roman Church operated in Latin, not Italian. Masses were spoken and sung (or at least chanted) in Latin, no matter what country they were held in or what the local language was. But most priests and many monks as well were trained in Rome, and the local language of Rome (by the tenth century) was the one we now call Italian, even though the country of Italy didn’t exist yet.

Since the Roman Empire covered most of the ‘known world’ at the time, and since that empire began (in the fourth century) to be nominally Christian rather than pagan, and since priests and other ecclesiastics were trained mostly in Rome, it seems natural to me that Italian became the ‘lingua franca’  (to misuse the phrase) of music. Whether they hailed from Germany, Austria, France, England, or any other ‘Western’ country, the people who used the language of music, which was used first in the Church and only later in more secular settings, adopted Italian or pseudo-Italian words to tell us how fast to go and what sound-level to employ in the music they were writing. (I say ‘pseudo-Italian’ because anyone who is a native Italian speaker will tell you that many musical terms only vaguely resemble the Italian words they’re supposedly based on.)

Let’s take the term ‘Andantino,’ for example. I’m told by native Italian speakers that there’s no such word. Yet it’s a very common tempo marking in a lot of music. The word ‘Andante’ means, literally, ‘walking.’ Or ‘at walking speed.’  ‘Andantino’ is supposedly a diminutive of that, meaning ‘sort-of walking speed.’ (Whether that means a bit faster than Andante or a bit slower than Andante is a matter of great debate!) And of course the term ‘Andante’ itself is fairly imprecise. A person can walk really quickly or really slowly and still be walking! (As opposed to running or crawling!)

In any event, here is a list of the most-used Italian tempo (speed) markings, from fastest to slowest. (Note that some authorities rank Moderato above Andante rather than below it.)

        Presto

Vivace

Allegro

Andante

Moderato

Adagio

Lento

Largo

‘Presto’ means literally ‘Immediately’ or “Instantly,’ but since it’s impossible to play an entire piece of music in an instant, the word is generally taken to mean “Really really fast.” Or “as fast as possible.” Nevertheless, there is also a marking that’s even faster: ‘Prestissimo.’ Which I guess must mean “even faster than possible”!  Largo can be turned into Larghissimo in a similar manner. (And Allegro can be turned into Allegretto, which means a hair slower than Allegro.)

Having provided a list of tempos, it next seems desirable to present a similar list of intensities or loudness levels (volumes). The generic word for these is dynamics. Here we go:

        Fortissimo

Forte (pronounced FOR-tey; the e is not silent).

Mezzo-Forte

Mezzo-Piano

Piano

Pianissimo

These are always written in a special combined bold-and-italic font, like this:

        

    

Supposedly, two f’s or two p’s are considered the loudest and softest possible sounds. But a marking of three f’s in a row is fairly common, and the Russian composer Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky once marked the last few measures of a clarinet part as five p’s in a row. (Perhaps he didn’t want it to be audible at all!)

By the way, 'Mezzo' means 'medium,' and mezzo-forte means 'medium loud,' while mezzo-piano means 'medium soft.' One would think there might be a just-plain-medium marking, but there isn't.

That’s it for this time. Next post will be about even more Italian words and their musical meanings, along with some other markings that are related to, but separate from, the volume marking we just reviewed.

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