Tempi and Repeats

Tempi and Repeats in the Performance of Classical Music.

The issue of tempi has arrisen recently, with a view to Beethoven's Metronome markings, and whethere these are accurately followed and of real significance to the quality of any given performance.

In Beethoven's case this issue is doubly difficult because his concern for the practicle possibilities of his music was somewhat compromised by his own hearing problems. All composers have an idea what speed they want the music to go at, and sometimes this is plain wrong. Elgar for example was prone to alter the indication of speed after the hearing someone else perform it or in one case that should be more famous after recording it at approximately his oun metronome marking. When reviewing the test pressings of his own 1926 recording of the Enigma Variations he wrote in the published piano reduction his critcal comments on his own reading!

On the VIII Variation, he scrawled, "Agree with Dr R. A leetle slower." To decipher this, he was refering to the fact that Dr Hans Richter, the great conductor and admirer of Elgar's music, had suggested this 26 years earlier, and Elgar even imitates his German accent!

Sibelius was very flexible about what he wanted, and sent a telegram about it to Anthony Collins who made a pioneering set of the Symphonies in the 50s for Decca, most recently issued on Beulah, and the two were in contact on many details during the course of the enterprise. Sibelius cabled to the effect that the conductor must have the freedom to make the music natural and alive! Carte Blanche is what that sounds like though I think, but Collins knew what the old man wanted by the comment.

Brahms was so upset by people obsessing about his metronome marks that he wanted them all removed from the published works!

Really the style and speed come from several related aspects.

The Hall accoustic has a significant bearing on the eventual chosen tempi in music. For example where there is a good clear accoustic like the Festival Hall the tempi can be and will be naturally quicker than in a big hall like the Albert Hall, which has an excessively long and slow accoustic. Furtwangler explains this at length in his writings on 'tempi and the possibility of sound.' His conclusion is that there can be no such artistic thing as standardised tempi. Clearly the range of tempi in different performances in any given work tend to bear out Furtwangler's view, and he was both a performer and a composer...

So slavish adherence to the metronome may be seen asa mixed blessing.

Boult sagaceously noted that the metronome mark should give an indicator of the sort of tempo that the composer had in mind, as a stylistic guide! Wagner suggests it is likely to apply to only a very few bars in the whole movement or section concerned.

So clearly tempo is something to understand within a stylistic framework rather than as a literal reading of the mechanical figure given at the head of some scores. It completely ignores tempo rubatto, and natural changes of pace at cadenses, let alone how one deals with repeats.

Repeats.

Much classical music contains repeat marks which are either taken in performance or left unplayed. Some are conventionally taken such as first time repaets in Minuets and Trios, though usually not second time repeats. Should repeats always be played or should judgement be applied? In practice, judgement is the rule, and there is no standardisation in this area at all.

Brahms had an interesting comment, in that he thought that early performances of a work should always have the repeats but if the audience already knew the music, why play them! To Haydn and Mozart there seems to have been the thought that any piece could be taylored in time duration to the needs of particular circumstances, so a repeat sign might be ignored if time was shorter and followed if another five minutes of music was required. This seems a very slack carry on, but true in many cases.

Nowadays we have the benefit of concerts where the conditions of performance are often quite ideal and the question of repeats can be considered on artistc grounds alone. If Brahms Third Symphony follows the interval, for example Boult felt the first movement exposition repeat should be always taken as it gives greater weight to the whole Symphony, whereas if the symphony was programmed in the first half, usually with another work, he tended to drop it. This of course is also of relevance to the actual tempo of the movement concerned! astudy of both Furtwangler's and Boult's commercial recording will reveal that both quite happily played or ignored this particular repeat according to circumstances, and indeed this also indicates the approach to the necessary changes in tempi to accomodate the policy addopted in any given performance.

This is a huge area of consideration, and from what I have written above, just scratching the surface, it will be clear that little value can be, or actually is given, to a dogmatic approach to tempi! Let alone the metronome


All the best from Fredrik