To get this all confirmed, I suppose we’d need a native Italian speaker.
However, the crucial difference between the two seems to be one of musical intent and effect. The rallentando, I imagine, is often accompanied by a diminuendo, and should probably be more gradual than the ritardando in many cases. I can think of some Debussy and Liszt pieces, however, where a rallentando might be more appropriate, to give the effect of dying away, drifting away, or perhaps falling asleep. The difference is a subtle but important one, methinks.Ī couple of examples: The end of a Bach piece would probably require a ritardando in order to create a deliberate, final-sounding ending to the piece. Ritardando seems to be a deliberate slowing or being late, while rallentando seems to be more of a letting go or dying away. Rallentare: “ slow down, reduce speed, slacken, slow, die down, decelerate, check, put back.”īingo! There is a difference.Ritardare: “ be late, wait, retard, lag, stay, lose, delay, set back, defer, put off.”.Upon entering the words into an Italian-English Dictionary, I found these definitions: There is a lot of debate on various forums on the internet, but very little is conclusive.Īccording to the Italian-English Dictionaries… One person on this forum compared a rallentando to coasting to a stop in your car and a ritardando to braking to a stop. However, it’s not clear whether they mean that the ritardando is to occur over a shorter period of time than the rallentando, or whether the ritardando is a greater slowing of the tempo than a rallentando over the same period of time. Some people ( here too) state that rallentando is a more gradual slowing down than ritardando.
So I decided to do a little more digging. And composers have been making use of both words in their compositions for centuries.
After all, they are two different words in the Italian language. However, I would still like to think there is some slight difference in meaning or emphasis between the two words. Some state that the two words are synonyms. Many musical dictionaries simply state, “slowing down” as the definition for both rallentando and ritardando. Ever wonder about the difference between rallentando and ritardando? Well, I did….so I decided to look into it and add my two cents to the debate.
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