BY ANDREW MESSENGER
I remember once, in my brief career as a trombonist, playing a bit of music based on Dante’s Inferno. At the climax of the song, the score was marked ‘IMPENDING DOOM’. Firstly, I was impressed by the sheer audacity of the composer to use such a ludicrously over-the-top direction. But then I was confused. What do you do with that marking? Is it telling you to go faster, slower, louder, or softer?
As I later found, this is a common experience. Everyone, at least once in their lives, looks at their music, reads the score markings, and says, ‘huh?’ So, as a public service, I thought I’d explain some of the most obscure musical terminology of classical music. Be warned: these terms may or may not actually exist.
Im Anfang Shr Gemaechlich
A notorious marking from the German great Gustav Mahler, this literally translates as “getting faster with a feel of getting slower”. Good luck keeping that one together, string section.
Noch ein wenig bescheunigend
Perhaps the most fundamental emotional state of German music. This marking calls for increasing, overpowering and intense inner torment on the part of the soloist, orchestra, or choir. Germans take their kultur seriously (also, hat tip to the New Philharmonia Orchestra of Newtown, MA for this one).
Demi-cul
This is a French marking used by composers like Debussy, but not actually by Debussy. It is essentially used to indicate that the musician ought to play like they were on a beach on the Riviera on a warm Sunday afternoon. Above all, only half your mind ought to be on the job. Its literal translation is “lazy” or “half-assed”.
Serdechnyy ritm
This Russian terminology indicates that the composer is very afraid of being thrown in prison and wishes the musician to share his fear while playing a particular passage. Its literal translation is “cardiac rhythm” or “the rhythm played when in fear for your life”.
Morendo
Unlike many of the alleged terms of this list, this one is actually real. It isn’t even all that obscure (it means “dying away”). However, what I bet you didn’t know about morendo is that it’s reportedly used in hospitals to delicately warn other doctors that the patient is not long for this world. So, next time you’re fading tastefully out of a sad song, think of that cheery thought and play like a dying patient.
Louden, louden more, or louden lots
Percy Grainger has some of the most whimsical and bizarre score directions of any 20th Century composer – and that is saying something. Many a professional musician have been defeated by unexpected craziness, reduced to paroxysms of laughter.
With a dramatic and crippling mother complex
Grainger was also a proper weirdo.
Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso
Beethoven, first movement, Symphony No. 9. This is another legitimately real score marking, albeit a totally insane one. What was Beethoven thinking? This has to be one of the most needlessly specific and self-contradictory tempo markings of classical music. Basically, it means fast, quickly and bright – but not too fast, quickly or bright – and a little bit slow and march-like. Nope!
