Rushing and Dragging
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When performers unintentionally speed up, they are said to rush. The similar term for unintentionally slowing down is drag.
Musicians generally consider unintentional tempo drift undesirable, and these terms thus carry a negative connotation.
Therefore neither rush nor drag (nor their equivalents in other languages) are often used as tempo indications in scores. Mahler is a notable exception. For example, he used schleppend (dragging) as part of a tempo indication in the first movement of his Symphony No. 1.
Read more about this topic: Tempo
Famous quotes containing the words rushing and/or dragging:
“There are those who say to you—we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years late.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
We shall find out.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)