Adagio (from Italian ad agio — “at ease”) is one of the key tempo markings in classical music. Composers choose it when they want to create space for the listener's emotional immersion.
Famous examples: the so-called Albinoni's Adagio (in fact by Remo Giazotto, 1958), Barber's Adagio for Strings, and the adagio from Mahler's Ninth Symphony. In such works each note carries weight, and pauses speak as eloquently as the sounds themselves.
On the tempo scale, adagio is slower than andante but faster than largo: roughly 66–76 beats per minute. In multi-movement cycles — sonatas, symphonies, quartets — it is the adagio that traditionally becomes the lyrical centre, the place of deepest concentration. The Ukrainian composer Borys Lyatoshynsky raised the adagio in his slow movements to the level of a philosophical monologue.
