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:
“Roll forth, my song, like the rushing river,
That sweeps along to the mighty sea;”
—James Clarence Mangan (1803–1849)
“There I was dragging the ocean, that knock-out,
in and out by its bottle-green neck, letting it chew
the rocks, letting it haul beach glass and furniture sticks
in and out.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)