Prestissimo Tempo: Meaning and BPM Range

What does prestissimo mean?

Prestissimo is an instruction to play at the fastest tempo the music allows. It adds the Italian superlative suffix -issimo to presto (“quickly”), giving “very quickly” or “as quickly as possible”.

Prestissimo is the fastest marking in common use and the top rung of the Italian tempo marking scale. Its opposite at the slow end is larghissimo. Because it is a superlative, prestissimo defines itself against presto: whatever presto means in a given piece, prestissimo is faster.

What BPM is prestissimo?

200 BPM and above in commonly cited modern charts. The table shows how short each note becomes as the tempo rises.

At 240 BPM, sixteenth notes arrive 16 times per second. The BPM to millisecond note chart extends the table to triplets and thirty-second notes.

Why prestissimo has no upper limit

The range is open-ended because the limit is set by the music and the performer, not by the word. A passage of long chords can go much faster than a passage of rapid sixteenth notes.

Three practical ceilings apply. First, note density: at 200 BPM a sixteenth note lasts 75 ms, and each extra 16 BPM removes another 4–6 ms from every sixteenth note. Second, the instrument: repeated notes, wide leaps and bow changes set their own limits. Third, clarity: past a certain speed the listener no longer hears separate notes. For these reasons a prestissimo is best understood as “faster than this piece’s presto would be”, not as a number.

Prestissimo vs presto

Presto spans about 168–200 BPM; prestissimo starts where presto ends. The two markings meet at 200 BPM.

Composers who want extreme speed without the superlative write presto assai or molto presto, which sit at the top of presto rather than beyond it. The presto guide with its qualifier list covers those markings, and the vivace page on the lively fast tempo covers the step below.

Counting prestissimo in half notes or whole bars

Count a prestissimo in half notes or in whole bars; a quarter-note count above 200 BPM is not practical. The slower counting level turns an extreme tempo into a manageable pulse.

• 208 BPM in 2/2 or 4/4: count 104 half notes per minute, one every 576.92 ms.
• 240 BPM in 4/4: count 120 half notes per minute, one every 500 ms.
• 240 BPM in 3/4: count one beat per bar, 80 bars per minute, one every 750 ms.

The alla breve (cut time) guide explains the half-note beat that many fast movements use.

Famous prestissimo movements

Beethoven marked several piano sonata movements prestissimo.

• Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 2 No. 1 — fourth movement, Prestissimo.
• Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109 — second movement, Prestissimo.

Both movements are in minor keys, F minor and E minor, and both are in sonata form.

A practice ladder toward prestissimo

Work up from 60% of the target tempo in 10% steps. For a target of 208 BPM, the ladder has five rungs.

Stay on each rung until the passage is clean several times in a row. Set the metronome for each prestissimo rung, and from step 3 onward switch to a half-note click at half the BPM.