(It.: ‘just time’, ‘strict time’).
(1) The abstract concept of a ‘correct’ tempo for a piece. Frescobaldi (preface to Toccate e partite, 1615) wrote that ‘Nelle partite si pigli il tempo giusto e proportionato’; Rousseau (1768, article ‘Mouvement’) stated that each basic measure had an ideal tempo called in Italy the tempo giusto; and Kirnberger (1776), following Rousseau’s lead, explained all the tempo marks in relation to a tempo giusto which was ‘determined by the time signature and by the shortest and longest note values contained in a piece’.
(2) As a tempo designation (also a tempo giusto) actually affixed to a piece it is rarer, but found particularly in Handel. ‘Egypt was glad’, ‘He led them out of the deep’, ‘Thy right hand’ and ‘The horse and his rider’ from Israel in Egypt are all tempo giusto; and Handel originally marked the allegro moderato in the Messiah overture as a tempo giusto before changing it to the present marking. It was presumably in the same sense that Stravinsky used tempo giusto to open his ‘Dumbarton Oaks’ Concerto. But when Chopin used it for some of his waltzes (though scarcely elsewhere in his work) he was indicating that the traditional waltz tempo should be adopted. In 1800 William Crotch wrote to the Monthly Magazine observing, among other things, that ‘[tempo ordinario] varies with the fashion of the age, [tempo giusto] with the fancy or judgement of the performers’.
(3) A direction to return to strict tempo after a deviation. It is found particularly often in Italian Baroque opera and described by Brossard (1703, article ‘Tempo’); but its use continued through the 19th century, for instance in Liszt, who normally used it to mark the end of an a piacere section.
For bibliography see Tempo and expression marks.
DAVID FALLOWS