“Allegro, but not too much so”: A diachronic review of Croatian translations of Italian music performance designations

• Main Authors: Sanja Kiš Žuvela, Maura Filippi
• Format: Article
• Language: Croatian
• Published: Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje 2018-01-01
• Series: Rasprave: Časopis Instituta za Hrvatski Jezik i Jezikoslovlje
• Subjects: Croatian; handbooks; Italian; music terminology; textbooks; translation
• Online Access: http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/318279
• ISSN: 1331-6745; 1849-0379

In his 1875 translation of Lobe’s Kathekismus der Musik (the first music theory manual printed in Croatia), father of Croatian musical terminology Franjo Kuhač clearly expressed his attitude towards the possible calquing of Italian musical terms in Croatian: “All terms concerning the practical performance of a musical work, including tempo markings and other sorts of explanations, e.g. Largo, Allegro, dolce, crescendo, grazioso, tremolo staccato, col arco etc., should remain in Italian, because a practicioning musician must be able to perform music in any country and read any score“11. Kuhač, however, did not miss the opportunity to translate (to a greater or lesser degree of success) Italian terms on the in order to clarify them to non-Italianspeaking students. Professional texts on music written in Croatian and other European languages include a large number of disputable translations of Italian musical terms. The authors have discussed such translations and examined their possible influence on the performance practice of those musicians who do not speak Italian. The presence of the same translations in different texts indicates their fixedness and the existence of a certain ”tradition“ of their transfer through history. By analyzing a diachronic corpus of music teaching materials, this paper aims to find the origins of this phenomenon, to offer a classification of disputable translations, and to decipher the reasons for their persistence.