Andante is the present participle of andare, to go: it means walking. That is an unusually concrete instruction for a tempo word, and it is worth taking literally — the test for an andante is whether it moves the way a person walks, which is neither strolling nor hurrying.
Its width is the reason it is the marking musicians argue about most. Because andante means “moving”, più andante logically means “more moving”, i.e. faster — but many composers have used it to mean slower, and the confusion is old enough that Brahms complained about it in writing. Where the direction matters, the safe reading is the one the music supports.
The related markings sort out the middle ground: andantino is a diminutive whose direction is genuinely ambiguous (usually a little faster), andante moderato is slightly held back, and andante con moto asks for the walk to have some purpose in it.
Pieces marked andante
The middle column is the marking exactly as it is printed, qualifiers and all — which is usually more instructive than the word on its own.
| Piece | Marked |
|---|---|
| Mozart — Piano Concerto No. 21, K. 467, 2nd movement | Andante |
| Haydn — Symphony No. 94 “Surprise”, 2nd movement | Andante |
| Tchaikovsky — Symphony No. 5, 2nd movement | Andante cantabile, con alcuna licenza |
Where andante sits
The markings on either side, with the ranges the reference tables give them. They overlap, and that is not an error in the table — it is what the words are like.
| Marking | BPM | Character |
|---|---|---|
| Larghetto | 60–66 BPM | rather broadly |
| Adagio | 66–76 BPM | slow and stately |
| Andante | 76–108 BPM | at a walking pace |
| Moderato | 108–120 BPM | moderately |
| Allegretto | 112–120 BPM | moderately fast |
The full ladder, from larghissimo to prestissimo, is on the index page.
How much to trust the number
Three things are true of every range on this site, and of every tempo table anywhere else:
- They are ranges, not values. Andante is a band 32 BPM wide, and both ends of it are correct.
- They varied by era. The words are centuries older than the metronome — Maelzel patented his in 1815, long after composers were writing adagio at the top of a page — so the numbers were fitted to the vocabulary afterwards, by people who disagreed. A Baroque andante and a Romantic andante are not the same speed, and neither is wrong.
- A metronome mark on the score always wins. If the music says ♩ = 96, that is the tempo, and the Italian word above it is telling you about character rather than speed. Set the number, ignore the table.
Andante is the marking where the words disagree with each other most: some tables place it below adagio and some well above moderato. A walking pace is a more reliable guide than any of them.
One housekeeping note about this site specifically. The metronome’s live readout has to print exactly one marking for any tempo, so it uses a narrower, non-overlapping ladder in which andante runs 76–107 BPM. That band sits inside the 76–108 BPM above; it is the same marking, cut so that two names can never claim the same BPM.
Frequently asked questions
How fast is andante?
Andante is 76–108 BPM — a walking pace, and one of the widest bands on the list.
What is andante in BPM?
Andante is usually given as 76–108 BPM. At 92 BPM — the middle of that band, and the tempo the metronome on this page opens at — one beat lasts 652 milliseconds. Andante is the marking where the words disagree with each other most: some tables place it below adagio and some well above moderato. A walking pace is a more reliable guide than any of them.
Is andante faster than moderato?
Moderato is the faster of the two: 108–120 BPM against 76–108 BPM. The two ranges overlap in most published tables, which is normal — these are descriptions of character that were fitted to numbers afterwards, so neighbouring markings shade into each other rather than meeting at a line.