What 'Ma Non Troppo' and Other Tempo Modifiers Mean

Ma non troppo means "but not too much" — three small Italian words a composer adds when they want a tempo held back from its natural extreme. You meet it most often as allegro ma non troppo: fast, but don't run away with it. These Italian tempo modifiers are the second half of the tempo vocabulary. A base marking like Allegro gives you the ballpark; modifiers like ma non troppo, assai, molto, and con moto tell you where inside that ballpark to sit and which way to lean. What each one means is easy enough to look up. What most dictionaries leave out is how it actually shifts the BPM, and that is what I want to get at here.

What Does "Ma Non Troppo" Mean?

Break it into parts: ma (but), non (not), troppo (too much). Together, ma non troppo is a brake. The composer names a tempo, then warns you off its upper limit. It attaches to several base markings — allegro ma non troppo, adagio ma non troppo, andante ma non troppo — and each time the instruction is the same: stay clear of the extreme.

In practice that means picking the calmer side of the range. Allegro ma non troppo usually settles into the lower, more controlled end of Allegro, closer to 120–138 than to the 156 top of the band. Students almost always overshoot it: the word Allegro pulls the eye, the metronome creeps up, and the phrase starts to scramble. The ma non troppo is there precisely to stop that. The most famous case pushes further still — Beethoven marked the first movement of his Ninth Allegro ma non troppo at a surprisingly restrained quarter-note = 88, below the Allegro band entirely, and conductors have argued over that number ever since (most land around it or a touch under). Whatever you make of it, it shows how far "not too much" can pull a tempo back. For the full base ranges these words attach to, keep our full Italian tempo markings chart open alongside this page.

Molto and Assai: "Very," and How They Push the Tempo Up

Molto and assai both translate as "very," and both pull a tempo toward its fast end. They are near-synonyms; assai is the older, slightly more formal word (it comes from the Latin ad satis, "to sufficiency"), while molto is the everyday "much." Where ma non troppo reins a tempo in, these two let it off the leash.

Allegro assai and molto allegro sit at the top of the Allegro range and can spill into Vivace territory — think 150–176. The distance between allegro ma non troppo and allegro assai is enormous even though both start from the same word. To feel it, try it at the top of the allegro range, then drop thirty clicks: same marking, two different pieces of music.

Poco and Poco a Poco: "A Little" vs. "Little by Little"

Here is a pair students routinely blur. Poco means "a little" and works as a static nudge: poco adagio is a little slow, poco allegro a little quick. Poco a poco means "little by little," and it almost never stands alone — it hangs on a change. You see it as accelerando poco a poco (speed up gradually) or crescendo poco a poco (get louder by degrees).

The test is simple. If the word describes a fixed adjustment, it's poco. If it describes something happening over time, it's poco a poco, and there will be a verb of change nearby doing the real work.

Con Moto, Con Brio, Con Fuoco: Tempo with Character

Con means "with." The words after it add character rather than a number: con moto (with motion), con brio (with spirit), con fuoco (with fire). Of these, con moto is the one that clearly moves the tempo — it asks for forward motion, nudging you toward the upper end of whatever base marking it follows.

The slow movement of Beethoven's Fifth is marked Andante con moto, and that pairing tells you everything: a walking pace, yes, but one that leans ahead and refuses to sag — up around 92–108 rather than the bottom of Andante. Con brio and con fuoco speak more to attack and energy than to a specific BPM, but in the room they usually nudge a player a hair faster all the same.

Andante Moderato and Other Compound Base Markings

Occasionally two tempo words are welded together, and the result lives between them. Andante moderato is the common one: Andante runs 76–108 and Moderato 108–120, so their compound settles around 92–112 BPM — an unhurried walk with a touch more purpose. Sources disagree at the edges (some put it as narrow as 92–98), which is normal for a marking this interpretive. To hear where it lands, set a metronome to andante moderato and walk around the room; your natural pace will tell you if the number feels right for the passage.

Più Mosso and Meno Mosso: More and Less Motion

Mosso is "moved" — the past participle of muovere, to move. So più mosso is "more moved" (faster) and meno mosso is "less moved" (slower). The crucial thing is that these are immediate shifts to a new tempo, not gradual ones. Do not read più mosso as accelerando; accelerando ramps, più mosso steps.

They also stack with the words above. Poco più mosso is a little faster, molto meno mosso a good deal slower. Once you can read the qualifiers separately, the compound markings stop looking like a foreign phrasebook and start reading like plain instructions.

How Each Modifier Changes the BPM

Modifiers describe direction and degree, not exact numbers. The same caveat that governs the base markings applies double here, so treat the figures below as a starting point rather than a rule. When a marking asks you to hold back, the safest way in is practicing the passage slightly under tempo first, then letting it find its level.