What's the difference between adagio and lento?

Adagio


Definition:

  • (a. & adv.) Slow; slowly, leisurely, and gracefully. When repeated, adagio, adagio, it directs the movement to be very slow.
  • (n.) A piece of music in adagio time; a slow movement; as, an adagio of Haydn.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Perhaps it was coincidence, but when somebody in an apartment in Copacabana, four blocks from the beachside fan park, began playing Barber's Adagio for Strings on a loop, it seemed entirely in keeping with the general mood.
  • (2) Joni Mitchell's A Case Of You, Elvis Costello's Shipbuilding and Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings, from the film Platoon, have similar effects.
  • (3) An all-Russian programme followed, with arias from Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, and a Shostakovich's tango from the Golden Age ballet was only outdone by an elegant adagio from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, featuring principal ballerina Svetlana Zakharova.
  • (4) The movie is slower, darker and more cynical than anything Aaron Sorkin would write, and West Wing addicts might well find this a little bit adagio compared to the galloping allegro of Sorkin's rat-a-tat style.
  • (5) His programmes in the orchestra's Mahler, Vienna and the Twentieth Century series were both eclectic and logical; on one evening, the Adagio from the Tenth Symphony and Debussy's Nocturnes shared an elusive tonal incandescence that will never be forgotten by those who heard it.

Lento


Definition:

  • (a. & adv.) Slow; in slow time; slowly; -- rarely written lente.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Un año más tarde, el 43% de los usuarios de transporte público de la ciudad dijeron que el servicio era demasiado lento.

Words possibly related to "lento"