Have you ever read music? If so, you probably noticed lots of new symbols and words. Maybe you saw the word presto at the beginning. Perhaps you read piano, forte, and fortissimo throughout The Son. You probably needed to ask your teacher what these words meant. Or maybe you didn't — if you knew how to read Italian!
Italian is sometimes called the language that sings.__________ If not, have you heard it out loud? Many think it sounds musical. However, the link between Italian and music is deeper than that. Today, the musical vocabulary is full of Italian words.
However, it wasn't always so. Thousands of years ago, people didn't write music. Instead, they passed songs down orally and taught each other to play them on instruments. Around 1000 AD, an Italian man named Guido d'Arezzo came up with the idea of written music. Over the next few centuries, many of the people writing music were Italian. They used Italian words to describe tempo, dynamics, moods and other aspects of music.
Of course, people in other parts of the world were writing music, too. In order to standardize written music, many of them used the Italian terms. Others wrote music in their own languages. For example, Beethoven sometimes used German words instead of Italian.
Still, Italian is the primary language used in music. You might already be familiar with some terms! One example is tempo – the speed of a piece of music. Markings in written music tell the player when the music should be adagio (slow), or allegro (fast). Some pieces are even presto (very fast). These are just a few of the Italian words commonly used in music.
