Ritardando

What it means

Ritardando means gradually slowing down. It is written as the word or abbreviated rit. or ritard. It sits in the notation section of the dictionary.

The Italian derives from ritardare, to delay. The tempo is progressively delayed rather than dropped. Use the free metronome to check yourself on this.

The related terms

Three similar markings exist and the distinctions, where they hold, are worth knowing.

Ritardando (rit.), gradually slowing. The most common.

Rallentando (rall.), gradually slowing, becoming broader. Often implies a slight relaxation of character as well as tempo.

Ritenuto (riten.), held back. Strictly this means an immediate reduction in tempo rather than a gradual one, closer to a sudden new slower tempo than to a slowing.

In practice composers use rit. and rall. interchangeably, and ritenuto is sometimes abbreviated rit. as well, which creates genuine ambiguity.

The context usually resolves it: a rit. over several bars is gradual, a rit. on a single beat is probably ritenuto.

The pacing problem

The same error as with crescendo, in a different dimension.

A ritardando over four bars is played as a sudden slowing in bar one followed by three bars at the new slower tempo.

The result is a tempo change rather than a gradual slowing.

The correction is the same: stay at tempo for longer than feels natural. Most of the slowing happens in the last third.

That produces the sense of gradually settling that a good ritardando has, rather than a step down followed by a plateau.

Where it ends

Determined by what follows, and this matters more than students expect.

A ritardando into a new slower tempo should arrive at that tempo, not slower.

A ritardando into a fermata can slow substantially, since the fermata absorbs the arrival.

A ritardando at the end of a piece typically slows considerably, and the final notes may be very broad.

A ritardando followed by a tempo means return to the original speed immediately after, which requires the slowing not to have gone too far or the resumption sounds abrupt.

A common error is slowing further than the following passage supports, so the resumption feels like a jolt.

How much

Not specified, and it is an interpretive decision.

Style matters. Baroque ritardandos are generally modest. Romantic ones can be substantial.

Position matters. A ritardando in the middle of a movement is usually smaller than one at the end.

Duration matters. A ritardando over eight bars can slow more than one over one bar.

The general guide: enough to be clearly heard, not so much that the pulse is lost.

In an ensemble

Among the harder things to unify without a conductor.

Every player must slow at the same rate, which requires agreement reached in rehearsal and communicated in performance by breath and gesture.

Chamber groups rehearse ritardandos explicitly. Orchestras follow the conductor.

A section where players slow at different rates produces a smear rather than a slowing.

The pulse question

An important practical point.

During a ritardando the pulse must remain clear even as it slows. Players and listeners need to feel where the beat is.

A ritardando where the pulse dissolves into vagueness is not a ritardando; it is a loss of tempo.

Subdividing internally through a ritardando keeps the pulse honest, and it is what experienced players do without thinking.

Related and adjacent markings

Poco rit., slowing a little.

Molto rit., slowing a lot.

Rit. poco a poco, slowing little by little, over a longer span.

Allargando, broadening, which usually means slowing and growing louder together.

Morendo, calando, smorzando, dying away, which combine slowing with diminuendo.

Where you meet it

Everywhere. Ritardandos appear at phrase endings, section endings and movement endings throughout the repertoire.

They also appear unmarked. Many stylistic conventions expect a slight slowing at a cadence whether or not it is written, particularly in Romantic music.

How it is taught

Early, alongside a tempo.

The pacing lesson is the one that recurs, and the exercise that helps is naming the tempo at each bar of the ritardando, checking that most of the slowing is still to come at the halfway point.

Naming the tempo bar by bar

The exercise that fixes ritardando pacing.

Take a four-bar ritardando from allegro to a fermata. Before playing, decide the tempo at each bar as a percentage of the original: bar 1 at 100, bar 2 at 95, bar 3 at 85, bar 4 at 65.

Notice how little has happened by bar two. That is the shape of a real ritardando, and it feels wrong to a student who has always dropped tempo immediately.

Play it with those proportions in mind. After a few weeks the pacing becomes instinct.

Keeping the pulse audible

A ritardando where the beat dissolves is not a ritardando; it is a loss of tempo.

Even as the music slows, the listener needs to feel where the pulse is. That requires the player to feel it too, which means continuing to subdivide internally through the slowing.

Students who stop counting during a ritardando lose the thread and cannot resume accurately afterward, which is why the bars after a rit. are frequently unstable.

Work on reading and notation where somebody can hear the difference. We run private and group violin lessons in Duluth, Buford and Norcross. Call 470-789-2422 to talk it through, or book a no-commitment evaluation lesson.