Affrettando

Part of speech: adverb

Definitions

1. A musical term instructing performers to gradually quicken their tempo while still expressing the character of the piece
2. An indication within a score to enhance the pace of the music, suggesting an escalating urgency in performance
3. A direction in music score signaling musicians to increase their speed progressively while maintaining the piece's stylistic essence

Etymology: "Affrettando" is a musical direction, the kind of instruction a composer writes above a passage to tell the player to quicken the tempo. It comes from Italian, where it is the gerund of "affrettare," meaning "to hasten," built on "affretto," or haste. Its ancestry runs back through Latin, where "ad-" ("to") joined with a word for speed, which is also why English keeps a tidy family resemblance to words like "frettoloso" in the same Italian vocabulary. Music borrowed the term from Italian as a whole, and English composers and performers picked it up along with the other tempo and expression markings that make up the language of the score. The word stays in its original spelling because it works as a technical instruction, much as "crescendo" or "allegro" does, rather than as an everyday English word.