retarding

Musicians in the English-speaking often use Italian musical terms instead of the English equivalents. Somehow they sound more musical, or maybe we think they are more musical because we usually encounter them in musical contexts. One of these is ritardando, which I’ll explain more in a moment. Some composers, most famously the Australian-American Percy Grainger, preferred or prefer English, specifically Germanic, terms. In Grainger’s case, unfortunately, this was specifically related to his ideas about racial purity.

A few days ago, one of the choirs I sing in sight-read a work by the American composer Leo Sowerby, whose name I knew but whose music I had never encountered. Scattered throughout is retarding, the direct equivalent of ritardando, but still Latinate. Grainger probably used the undoubtedly Germanic slowing. (I don’t know what Sowerby’s motivation in using the term was.)

One problem is that there are three closely related Italian terms: ritardando, rallentando and ritenuto, but composers don’t always observe the distinction and performers, teachers and students don’t always understand it when they do. The consensus of music dictionaries and websites is that ritardando means gradually and deliberately slower, rallentando means gradually and naturally slower and ritenuto means immediately slower. Another problem is that while the abbreviations ritard., rall. and riten. are unambiguous, rit. might mean ritardando or ritenuto. In my experience, composers use ritard. and rit. (that is, ritenuto) but you can never be sure.

Retarding is tainted by the use of retarded and retard (as a noun) to describe children (or adults) of delayed, slow or limited mental development (sometimes accompanied by physical deficits). This is part of what Steven Pinker calls the euphemism treadmill, in which any term becomes tainted by association with an idea pejorated by society. Thus idiots, imbeciles, morons and cretins became retarded or retards and are now usually developmentally disabled, a person with a developmental disability or cognitively impaired (“cogs”?). (These days, you just might get away with talking about the retarded growth of trees, or retarded economic growth (but would probably use slow(er)(ly)), but please don’t use it about any person or people.)

If we are going to use the English terms retarding or slowing, the next problem is what the opposite is. The direct equivalent of Italian accelerando (accel.) is accelerating. Fasting and fastening both mean different things. Maybe quickening for gradually faster and quicker for immediately faster. If you are going to use English/Germanic terms, it would be better to argue doing so on the grounds that beginner musicians will immediately know exactly what you mean. But so much music uses the Italian terms that student musicians will need to learn the Italian terms eventually.

I recently found a website called I used to believe, to which anyone can submit their “ funny and bizarre ideas that thought were true when they were children”. One contributor (somewhere on this page) thought that tardy meant the same thing as retarded, until a teacher called them that one morning, then had to explain. They share a derivation from Latin tardus, slow, but have now developed different meanings. (See also tardigrade and alacrity and alacritous from alacer, quick and velocipede, velociraptor and velocity from velox, quick, swift.) 

(Note that the form retarted is used on some online forums, either by mistake or deliberately to mean “beyond retarded”. Please don’t use this at all.)

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