Why Italy
Why are musical terma in Italian Language?
I have noted only recently that most (if not all) of the terms used in music such as 'Andante", "Presto" and others ae in Italian language. Why was that langguage chosen instead of another?
Public Comments
- because Italy was one of the centers for the formalization of Western Arts (music & visual) hundreds of years ago. Leading into the Rennaissance & beyond, Italy was the cultural center of the Western world and during this time the 'language' of music was created, using Italian terms.
- It wasn't really chosen. It's just because, at the time when what we today call classical music was blossoming, there were many composers and musicians in Italy whose works spread, and with them, the words used in these works. The same is tru, so some extent, for the German language, which was used by German composers (eg Beethoven) aus Austrian ones (like Mozart) alike. If you're interested in this subject area, you may want to invest a few bucks and buy a copy of a little red book many musicians have: It's the Hirsche Musikwörterbuch, ISBN-3-920476-21-6. Many people I've sung or otherwise performed with own a copy, it has about 2000 musical terms in it with explanations and is just fun to browse through because you come across expressions like "l'estro poetico" ("in quixotic sense") or "tempo comodo" ("at leasurely speed").
