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Tempo   /tˈɛmpˌoʊ/   Listen
Tempo

noun
(pl. tempos, tempi)
1.
(music) the speed at which a composition is to be played.  Synonym: pacing.
2.
The rate of some repeating event.  Synonym: pace.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Tempo" Quotes from Famous Books



... with it. Youth, in the wake of commerce, had ebbed from Kings Port, had flowed out from the silent, mourning houses, and sought life North and West, and wherever else life was to be found. Into my revery floated a phrase from a melodious and once favorite song: O tempo ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... dentro le Scrofes, dove per l'impeto dei venti fu gettata sopra i scogli: tutti i marinari dell' equipaggio saltarono a terra per salvare la loro vita: Milord solo col di lui Medico Dottr. Bruno rimasero sulla nave che ognuno vedeva colare a fondo: ma dopo qualche tempo non essendosi visto che cio avveniva, le persone fuggite a terra respinsero la nave nell' acque: ma il tempestoso mare la ribasto una seconda volta contro i scogli, ed allora si aveva per certo che la nave coll' illustre personaggio, una grande quantita di denari, e molti ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... raised his baton and the celli began to sigh the mournful phrase which ushers in the symphony. Milton leaned back luxuriously as the woodwind commenced the next phrase; and then, while the introduction ended with a sweeping crescendo and the tempo suddenly increased, Elkan sat up and his eyes became fixed on the trombone and ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass

... ache to administer it. And Rose feared her hair would be white before the end of the term. You see, when there's a certain amount of housework you feel obliged to do, and when your studies fairly clamor for attention the rest of the time, it sets your nerves all awry to keep the tempo for clumsy fingers that go just half as fast as they should; or to teach over and over again that four times five are ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... "wine of China." And watching her closely, Victor permitted himself a smile of satisfaction as he noted the rapidity with which she yielded to the hypnogenic spell of the translucent quartz; how her breathing quickened, then took on a measured tempo like that of a sleeper; how a faint flush warmed the unnatural pallor of her cheeks, how her dilate eyes grew fixed in an unwinking stare, and ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... there will be no difficulty in finding them. The second movement, if played in a very singing but not dragging manner, will be found enjoyable, although by no means sensational. The ideas are musical and the spirit earnest. The finale, in the tempo of a minuet, is very pleasing indeed. Here, also, the purely musical idea rules everything. The problem with the composer is to treat an idea which pleased him, and to carry it through all the changes and modifications which occurred to him ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews

... played with the same strength and length of bow, otherwise the notes are swallowed. In light spiccato and staccato the detached notes should be played always with a single stroke of the bow. Some players, strange to say, find staccato notes more difficult to play at a moderate tempo than fast. I believe it to be altogether a matter of control—if proper control be there the tempo makes no difference. Wieniawski, I have read, could only play his staccati at a high rate of speed. Spiccato is generally held to be more difficult than ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens

... tempo so as to include the rhythmic beat of the hammer with the other instruments in his band. The blacksmith looked, smiled and let his hammer fall in consonance with the beat of the boy's hand, and for some moments there was glorious harmony between ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... "Quicker! My God, can't they pick it up?" Like an echo came LaChaise's "Plus vite! Stringendo, jusque au bout!" and with a gasp the composer greeted the quickened tempo. Then as the song swept to its first tempestuous climax he clutched Mary's arm. "That's it," he cried. "Can't you see ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster

... give them here. A yen is a note representing a dollar, or about 3s. 7d. of our money; a sen is something less than a halfpenny; a rin is a thin round coin of iron or bronze, with a square hole in the middle, of which 10 make a sen, and 1000 a yen; and a tempo is a handsome oval bronze coin with a hole in the centre, of which 5 make 4 sen. Distances are measured by ri, cho, and ken. Six feet make one ken, sixty ken one cho, and thirty-six cho one ri, or nearly 2.5 English ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... a lithograph of the portrait of "Giorgio Byron," by G.H. Harlow. A translation, "Al Tempo," "Time on whose arbitrary wing," pp. [129], 131, follows the Notes to the Corsair. The translation includes the four additional lines at the end of Canto I. stanza xi., but not the Note on ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... jam faritaj por doni similan ilon. Unu post la alia, ili malgrandigxadis gxis la nuna tempo, kiam Esperanto venkis. Estas kredeble ke, je kuro de agxoj, homara sagxeco povus elpensi lingvon pli idealan ol Esperanto, sed ni ne povas atendi. Ni bezonas helpantan lingvon, kaj ni tuj bezonas gxin. Kaj, cxar per unanima konsento de cxiuj el la plej kompetentaj auxtoritatuloj, Esperanto estas ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 1 • Various

... sir. I am glad to see that men of letters are still considerate of their fellow craftsmen. Ah, you would have liked Jack London. Did you know him? You know, we live in an age of jazz. Yes, sir, the tempo is fast. Life has lost its andante. Materialism has triumphed. There is no longer room for the spirit to expand. Machines are in the way. Noises invade ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht

... with the tempo of the drums in a pitch that steadily descended. The glittering procession had come to rest at its appointed place in the pathway, of light as the wailing came down to a moan. "Oong! Oong!" the voices groaned, while the walls re-echoed the despairing tones. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various

... Quai du Midi, renamed Quai des Etats-Unis in the short-lived burst of enthusiasm of 1918. At least, the aldermen of Nice were more cautious than those of most French cities, and did not call it Quai du President-Wilson nel dolce tempo de la prima etade! Following the quay and keeping the Old Town on the left, you come to the castle hill, still called the Chateau, although the great fortress of the Savoyards was destroyed by the Duke of Berwick in the siege of 1706. The hill is now a park, surmounted ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... Simmo quite lost in watching something near my tent. He stood beside a great birch tree, one hand resting against the bark that he would claim next winter for his new canoe; the other hand still grasped his axe, which he had picked up a moment before to quicken the tempo of the bean kettle's song. His dark face peered behind the tree with a kind of childlike intensity written all ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long

... Conventions. The Supernatural Drama. The Irish National Theatre. The Personality of the Playwright. Themes and Stories of the Stage. Plausibility in Plays. Infirmity of Purpose. Where to Begin a Play. Continuity of Structure. Rhythm and Tempo. The Plays of Yesteryear. A New Defense of Melodrama. The Art of the Moving-Picture Play. The One-Act Play in America. Organizing an Audience. ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... sense involves the responsibility of having the music performed at the correct tempo, with appropriate dynamic effects, with precise attacks and releases, and in a fitting spirit. This in turn implies that many details have been worked out in rehearsal, these including such items as making certain that all performers sing or play the correct tones in the correct rhythm; ...
— Essentials in Conducting • Karl Wilson Gehrkens

... at the measured tempo of her voice and the manner in which she permitted her eyebrows ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst

... expressions as the following are used: Cuntu 'un porta tempu, or lu cuntu 'un metti tempu, or 'Ntra li cunti nun cc'e tempu, which are all equivalent to, "The story takes no note of time." These Sicilian expressions are replaced in Tuscany by the similar one: Il tempo delle novelle passa presto ("Time passes quickly in stories"). Sometimes the narrator will bring himself or herself into the story in a very naive manner; as, for example, when a name is wanted. So in telling a Sicilian story which is another version ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... was a quicker tempo and had a better climax. 'Twas the great occasion of the annual military reviews. He graphically described boys driving colts hardly broken; mothers nursing babies, very squally; girls and their beaux sitting in the best wagon holding hands and staring about (as Warner said to me, "Young ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... almost lost in the viewports when a sort of upswept tempo began to run through the ship, an undercurrent of increased activity. Cargo was checked, inventoried and strapped in. Ringg was given four extra men to help him, made an extra tour of the ship, and came back ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley

... mouth like that of a greyhound merely flashed now and then in the wild tempo of the waltz she was performing. She danced with such temperament and skill that a storm of applause greeted her. Someone even threw her a bouquet. She picked it up and, retreating from the stage, smiled coquettishly like a veteran actress, sniffing in with distended ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont

... soulfully. Experimenting with the rolls, the stops and the power, he found there was nothing he could not do in time. Music answered—trombone, clarionet, horn, bassoon, hautboy, flute, 'cello answered. Volume and tempo were mere lever matters. On the rolls themselves were suggestions. Reaching this point, his exaltation knew no bounds. He looked upon the great array of rolls—symphonies, sonatas, concertos, fantasies, rhapsodies, overtures, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... begun with a hymn by the choir. The music for this consisted of a piano, banjo guitar and numerous tambourines. The negroes being naturally born with a great sense of rhythm the songs were not in the same tempo as the songs of the whites but were of a jazz tempo and with the banjo and tambourines it makes one think of the stories of the African jungles. The services start around 7:30 P.M. and usually ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... them, black-gowned and stiff-backed, sitting in your little room here, I thought I should never dare offer them anything more wildly exciting than a church service or a lecture on psychology, with perhaps a band concert hinted at, provided the band could be properly instructed beforehand as to tempo and selections. But now—really, Billy, why do you suppose they have taken such a fancy to these ...
— Miss Billy • Eleanor H. Porter

... melody undulate to and fro, like a skiff driven on over the bosom of tossing waves. This manner of execution, which set a seal so peculiar upon his own style of playing, was at first indicated by the term 'tempo rubato', affixed to his writings: a Tempo agitated, broken, interrupted, a movement flexible, yet at the same time abrupt and languishing, and vacillating as the flame under the fluctuating breath by which it is agitated. In his later productions we no longer find this mark. He was convinced ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... little "Berceuse," which has found a place in the "Nuptial Album" of Haslinger. Perhaps the continuous pedal D-flat will amuse you. The thing ought properly to be played in an American rocking- chair with a Nargileh for accompaniment, in tempo comodissimo con sentimento, so that the player may, willy-nilly, give himself up to a dreamy condition, rocked by the regular movement of the chair-rhythm. It is only when the B-flat minor comes in that there are a couple of painful accents...But why ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated

... along with maples when elms and beeches are to be had, why one man will exchange a roomful of man-fired porcelain for one bowl of sunlit alabaster. No chance anywhere. We call unto ourselves that which corresponds to our own key and tempo; and so long as we live, there is a continual re-adjustment without, the more unerringly to meet the ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... archness.) But I was up to his tricks, sir. I saw the idea coming into his head as he stood there, thinking what new joke he'd have with me. Yes, sir: that's the sort he is: very pleasant, ve—ry off hand and affable indeed, sir. (Again changing his tempo to say to Valentine, who is putting his stick down against the corner of the garden seat) If you'll allow me, sir? (Taking Valentine's stick.) Thank you, sir. (Valentine strolls up to the luncheon table and looks at the menu. The waiter turns to Crampton and resumes his lay.) Even the solicitor ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw

... prendesse, e lo portasse in questa infelice contrada, procurero che sia alloggiata in camere piu calde, e custodita di quelle della casa Colonna in Sollacaro; ma ella ancora dovra contentarsi di non viaggiare quando la giornata, e la stagione vogliono che si resti in casa per attendere il tempo buono. Io resto ora impaziente per la lettera che ha promesso scrivermi da Genova, dove dubito assai che la delicatezza di quelle dame non le abbia fatto fare qualche giorno di quarantena, per ispurgarsi di ogni anche piu leggiero influsso, che possa avere portato seco dell' aria di questo paese; ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... have the reputation of displaying the least regard for time. In operatic work, however, with an orchestra to follow or be followed, it is especially essential to observe a sane respect for the proper tempo. Otherwise one is liable to get into immediate trouble with the conductor. Of course I do not mean that one should sing in a mechanical way and give nothing of one's own personality. This would naturally rob the music of all charm. There are many singers who cannot or ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... al calcolar de' punti, Par ch' Asinina Stella a noi predomini, E'l Somaro e'l Castron si sian congiunti. Il tempo d'Apuleio piu non si nomini: Che se allora un sol huom sembrava un Asino, Mille Asini ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... how quickly the tempo of modern warfare could bring into our very midst the physical attack which we must eventually expect if the dictator nations ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... da laborantoj, kiel eble plej ili povas, en la nuna tempo penadas por enigxi pli profunde en tiujn interesegajn ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 3 • Various

... "Yes, I hear you." Its toneless, mechanical voice droned the words. Then the tempo quickened; the grid of wires in the mouth aperture behind its parted lips vibrated with a faint jangle. "I hear you. I cannot answer that question. He controls me. There is chaos—here,"—one of the hands came up and struck its breastplate ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... indented," and now along the railroad track, "where the Aeolian harp plays." But his eagerness throws him into the lithe, springy stride of the specie hunter—the naturalist—he is still aware of a restlessness; with these faster steps his rhythm is of shorter span—it is still not the tempo of Nature, it does not bear the mood that the genius of the day calls for, it is too specific, its nature is too external, the introspection too buoyant, and he knows now that he must let Nature flow through him and slowly; he releases his more personal desires to her broader rhythm, conscious that ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... Non era altri che esso, che sapesse lejere li antichi pataffii. Tutte scritture antiche vulgarizzava; quesse fiure di marmo justamente interpretava. On come spesso diceva, "Dove suono quelli buoni Romani? dove ene loro somma justitia? poleramme trovare in tempo che ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... in Rome, Bianca and Pizzicato repaired to their father's brother-in-law, who was well known as a lavish entertainer. He was one Rapidamente Tempo di Valse, a widower, living with his two sons, Lento and Comprino, handsome lads both in the first flush of manhood, and both destined to fall victims to Bianca's compelling attractions. Contemporary history informs us that Bianca stayed in the Palazzo ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... buzzed with it. It crept into the workroom—into the shipping-room. It penetrated the frowsy head of Jake, the elevator-man. As the days went on and the tempo of the front office slackened with that of the two bright little inner offices, only one member of the whole staff remained unmoved, incurious, taciturn. Pop Henderson listened, one scant old eyebrow raised knowingly, a whimsical half-smile screwing ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber

... have had recourse to a long and elaborately worked-up "messenger-speech," a pathetic recitation. That was the method best suited to the conditions, and to what may be called the prevailing tempo, of the Greek theatre. I am far from saying that it was a bad method: no method is bad which holds and moves an audience. But in this case it would have had the disadvantage of concentrating attention on the narrator instead of on the child's ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... quaint song in waltz time, the melody being that of an old Spanish song by Tradier, called "El Aveglito." A serious duet between Michaela and Don Jose ("Mia madre io la rivedo") follows, which is very tender in its character. The next striking number is the dance tempo, "Presso il bastion de Seviglia," a seguidilla sung by Carmen while bewitching Don Jose. In the finale, as she escapes, the Havanaise, which is the Carmen ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... order and number of movements. No. 1, for instance, has an Adagio, an Allegro, and a Menuett with variations. No. 2, in D, has four movements: Andante, Adagio, Allegro, Giga; the short Adagio is in D minor. No. 3, in G minor: Presto and A Tempo Giusto (a dignified fugue). The influence of Handel is strong, also that of Scarlatti. ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock

... The tempo was increasing to its highest pitch for the day. That highly complicated organism, a daily newspaper, which is apparently conceived in the wildest disorder, was about to "go to bed." Twenty typewriters were hammering out ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... clock ticked in that hurried tempo of five ticks to the second which has been the habit of clocks since time immemorial. Very small and trivial noises came from the background tape, preventing utter silence from hanging intolerably in the ship. They were traffic-sounds, recorded on a world no one knew how ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster

... his stock. From a back corner he brought out a small machine with an especially meditative tempo in its standby-lamp flicker. The tempo accelerated a little when he put ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... nearer to Hughie and murmured, "The Tango." He changed his tempo immediately, and almost without a pause of transition she began that provocative measure—the dance of desire. Thrilling with the joy of expressing her love, her beautiful new love for Seagreave, through her art, she danced with a verve, an abandon, a more spontaneous impulse than she ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... war. Instead of renewing ourselves inwardly through freedom and the spirit, and carrying on a defensive policy as quietly, discreetly, and inconspicuously as possible, we took to arming and hurrahing. Worse than any playing of false notes was the mistake we made in key and in tempo: D major, Allegro, Marcia, ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... brings heaven and elysian bowers into any parlor when he says or sings it to me." Mr. Arthur Symons has recently said: "'Christabel' is composed like music; you might set at the side of each section, especially of the opening, 'largo vivacissimo', and as the general expressive signature, 'tempo rubato'." Tennyson realized the musical effect of "Paradise Lost" when he spoke of Milton as "England's God-gifted organ-voice"; and he himself in such lyrics as those in the "Princess" and the eighty-sixth canto of ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... the sea, but spends as much of it on its way there, and at its various twists and turns, as it ultimately disgorges at its mouth. True, a nature like Goethe's not only has, but also engenders, more pleasure than any other; there is more mildness and noble profligacy in it; whereas the tenor and tempo of Wagner's power at times provoke both fear and flight. But let him fear who will, we shall only be the more courageous, in that we shall be permitted to come face to face with a hero who, in regard to modern culture, "has never learned the meaning ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche



Words linked to "Tempo" :   music, rate, allegro, accelerando, rubato, allegretto, meno mosso, metronome marking, beats per minute, andante, pace, musical time, M.M., bpm



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