Allegretto

What it means

Allegretto is the diminutive of allegro. It means a little allegro: moderately fast, lighter and less driven than allegro proper. See the notation section for everything related.

The diminutive suffix in Italian softens rather than reverses. Allegretto is slower than allegro and shares its cheerful character in a gentler form.

The tempo range

Roughly 98 to 120 beats per minute.

It sits between moderato below and allegro above.

The overlap with both is real, and the character usually decides more than the number.

The character

This is where allegretto differs most usefully from its neighbours.

Lighter than allegro. Less driven, less energetic, more graceful.

More motion than moderato. It moves and has lift.

Often dance-like. A great deal of allegretto writing has a dance quality, and playing it with that lilt suits the marking.

Charming rather than exciting. The word carries a sense of pleasantness rather than energy.

Composers frequently use it for movements that are cheerful without being vigorous, and for intermezzo-like movements between more substantial ones.

What it asks for technically

Lightness of bow. Generally a lighter stroke than allegro, often off the string.

Clarity without weight. Articulation should be crisp but not heavy.

Rhythmic lift. Where the writing is dance-like, the rhythmic character matters more than at other tempos. A minuet-like allegretto played squarely loses its charm.

Steady tempo. As with all moderate tempos, drift is a risk.

The dance connection

Worth noticing because it explains much of the repertoire.

Many allegretto movements derive from dance forms: minuets, gavottes, and later waltzes and scherzos at the gentler end.

Where that is the case, the dance's rhythmic character should be audible. A minuet has a particular lilt, with the first beat weighted and the phrase shaped in units of four bars. The metronome on this site is worth having open while you practise this.

A student who plays a dance movement without its dance quality has produced the notes and missed the point.

The scherzo relationship

Beethoven and later composers frequently marked scherzo movements allegretto rather than allegro or vivace, where the movement is playful rather than driving.

Reading such a marking as simply a slower allegro loses the character. Allegretto in that context indicates a specific lightness.

Common variants

Allegretto grazioso, moderately fast and graceful.

Allegretto scherzando, moderately fast and playful.

Allegretto moderato, at the slower end.

Allegretto vivace, at the faster end.

Allegretto ma non troppo, moderately fast but not too much.

Where you meet it

Common in Classical and Romantic repertoire.

Frequently used for second or third movements: the lighter movement between weightier ones.

Also for entire works of a lighter character.

Less common in Baroque repertoire, where the tempo vocabulary was smaller.

The most common error

Playing it as a slow allegro.

A student who treats allegretto as allegro with the tempo reduced produces something heavy and driven at a moderate speed, which is the least attractive combination available.

The character should change with the tempo: lighter bow, less weight, more lift.

The fix is usually a lighter bow stroke rather than anything to do with tempo at all.

The tempo drift

As with all moderate tempos, allegretto can accelerate toward allegro or sag toward moderato over a movement.

Because its identity is partly defined by sitting between them, drift is more consequential here: an allegretto that has become an allegro has changed character, not just speed.

Metronome checking during practice, and awareness of where the energetic passages are, both help.

How it is taught

After allegro and moderato, since it is defined relative to both.

The lesson that matters: it is not simply a speed between two others. It has its own character, lighter and more graceful than allegro, and playing it as a reduced allegro misses that.

The most effective demonstration is playing the same passage as an allegro and then as an allegretto, so the student hears that the difference is in the bow as much as the tempo.

The bow decides the character

The most useful practical insight about allegretto.

Two players at the same tempo, one using a heavier on-the-string stroke and one using a lighter off-the-string stroke, produce completely different characters. The first sounds like a slow allegro; the second sounds like an allegretto.

So the question when approaching an allegretto is not primarily what tempo but what stroke.

Generally: lighter than allegro, often off the string, less bow per note, less weight.

Students who address allegretto as a tempo question rather than a bow question rarely find the character.

The dance underneath

Many allegretto movements derive from dance forms, and playing the dance rather than the notes changes everything.

A minuet has a lilt: the first beat weighted, the phrase falling in four-bar units, a slight lift into each new phrase.

A gavotte has its characteristic upbeat.

Where a movement is titled or derived from a dance, learning how that dance moves is directly useful. Students who have never considered it play the rhythm accurately and the character not at all.

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