Presto is the marking for genuinely fast music: finales, moto perpetuo studies, the last movement of a sonata that has been building to it. Above it there is only prestissimo, which is as fast as the player can manage and is rarely written down without a reason.
Past about 200 BPM the beat stops being something a listener counts and becomes a texture. That is why presto movements are so often felt in half or in one — a presto in 3/4 is usually conducted one beat to the bar, and practising it that way is the difference between playing fast and playing hurried.
A caution about nicknames rather than markings: Mozart’s “Rondo alla turca” is played very fast by nearly everybody and is marked Allegretto. What a piece sounds like is not evidence of what the score says.
Pieces marked presto
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 |
|---|---|
| Beethoven — Piano Sonata No. 14 “Moonlight”, 3rd movement | Presto agitato |
| Chopin — Étude Op. 10 No. 4 in C♯ minor | Presto, con fuoco |
Where presto 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Allegro | 120–168 BPM | fast and bright |
| Vivace | 168–176 BPM | lively and fast |
| Presto | 168–200 BPM | very 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. Presto 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.
Presto is the marking where the instrument decides the tempo: 190 BPM is comfortable for a string section and impossible for the same figure on a bassoon. The published range is the ceiling of the word, not of the passage.
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 presto runs 176–199 BPM. That band sits inside the 168–200 BPM above; it is the same marking, cut so that two names can never claim the same BPM.
Frequently asked questions
How fast is presto?
Presto is 168–200 BPM — very fast, and near the top of what is playable as a beat rather than a blur.
What is presto in BPM?
Presto is usually given as 168–200 BPM. At 184 BPM — the middle of that band, and the tempo the metronome on this page opens at — one beat lasts 326 milliseconds. Presto is the marking where the instrument decides the tempo: 190 BPM is comfortable for a string section and impossible for the same figure on a bassoon. The published range is the ceiling of the word, not of the passage.
Is presto faster than vivace?
Vivace is the faster of the two: 168–176 BPM against 168–200 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.