(It.: ‘common time’).
(1) The Italian name for common time, 4/4, as explained by Brossard (1703, article ‘Tempo’) and many subsequent writers.
(2) As a tempo designation (also a tempo ordinario) it is found particularly in Handel, who used it, for instance, in ‘Lift up your heads’ and ‘Their sound is gone out’. But, like Tempo giusto, it was evidently in fairly current use as a concept to describe the ordinary, non-committal tempo that required no tempo designation. It was presumably in this sense that Beethoven wrote to Schott on 18 December 1826, saying: ‘We can hardly have any tempi ordinari any more, now that we must follow our free inspiration’.
For bibliography see Tempo and expression marks.
DAVID FALLOWS