Affrettando
A hurried acceleration, more urgent than a plain accelerando
Related
Affrettando comes from affrettare, "to hurry". It asks the music to press forward with a shade of urgency, even anxiety, and is common in opera and dramatic passages. It accelerates like accelerando, but where accelerando is neutral, affrettando implies something driving the music on.
The push is usually small and short, like a breath turning shallow; hurrying too early spends the climax before it arrives. It often sits beside stringendo: affrettando leans on emotion, stringendo on tightening texture and force, and the two may combine or divide the work. If affrettando stands alone, keep the underlying beat so the speed-up has shape.
Sources
- 术语的释义与用法，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians（Oxford Music Online）相关条目；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.