 | Andante grazioso e moderato | for everyone |
Grazioso: 1.
pleasantly kind, benevolent, and courteous.
2.
characterized by good taste, comfort, ease, or luxury: gracious suburban living; a gracious home.
3.
indulgent or beneficent in a pleasantly condescending way, especially to inferiors.
4.
merciful or compassionate: our gracious king.
—Synonyms
1. benign, friendly, favorable, polite. See kind . 4. tender, clement, mild, gentle.
e: In Italian, "e" means "and".
Moderato: Moderate tempo.
Recently I have been working on a Paderewski piece entitled Melodie in B Flat and I found this to be the tempo marking. I knew what each of these terms meant, but I have to admit that I had never seen them put together in this way before and it got me to thinking about...well lots of things. Having a personal interest in the great Paderewski, I couldn't help but wonder if this tempo marking was his or if it belongs to the arranger, Henry Geehl. Either way, as I continued my work on the piece with the tempo mark in mind, I discovered the music to truly exemplify those qualities and again that set me to wonder about what must have been going through Paderewski's mind as he composed this beautiful work.
Since this piece is very much a "walk", I got to thinking about walking. We could consider this a true walk as if we were going on a walk through town and the music certainly lends itself to that picture and I liked the idea of walking at a moderate speed not so fast that we miss things along the way or become stressed, but not so slow as to not get where we are going in a timely manner. If we consider the term, grazzioso or graciously along with andante and moderato, it seems to me to suggest more of the walk through life. What would it be to walk with graciousness at a moderate speed?
I finally came to the conclusion that this could be a proverb for our lives. We should walk slow enough to interact with those around us. When we meet people on our journey we should treat them with kindness, being helpful, courteous, using good taste and good manners, being merciful, even compassionate - certainly each of those terms could open up a whole new set of thoughts. We should not walk so slow as to get bogged down in the mundaneness of life or so slow that what needs doing doesn't get accomplished.
I think that this is my new favorite tempo mark, what would be yours and why?
Walking along at a moderate speed with grace and elegance - certainly something to consider and aim for.
