The Short

CHOICE OF TEMPO 287
the music was performed or directed is another question. Comparison of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century
composers' metronome marks with recorded performances which they themselves directed (for example, Elgar) 518
show that they often diverged significantly from their own instructions (and not only with respect to tempo). There is
evidence that earlier composers, too, were not consistent in this matter. When Berlioz incorporated several numbers
from his Huit scènes de Faust into La Damnation de Faust he gave them all slower metronome marks than before. And
Saint-SaËns recalled that when he heard Berlioz conduct a performance of his Grande messe des morts several of the
tempos were quite different from the ones printed in the score: the Moderato (? = 96) at the beginning of the ‘Dies
Irae’ was more like an allegro and the Andante maestoso (? = 72) following, like a moderato. 519
Notwithstanding such suggestions of variable practice, nineteenth-century anecdotes documenting composers'
concerns about finding the right tempo for performances of their work abound. Where they appear to have favoured a
more laissez-faire attitude, as in the case of Weber, Wagner (after TannhÄuser), or Brahms, the underlying assumption
seems to have been rather that a knowledgeable musician would light upon a tempo within the range envisaged by the
composer, than that any tempo, even if chosen by a sensitive artist, would do. Wagner was not giving an entirely free
rein to the performer when he wrote that things would be in a sorry state ‘if conductors and singers are to be
dependent on metronome marks alone’ and that ‘they will hit upon the right tempo only when they begin to find a
lively sympathy with the dramatic and musical situations and when that understanding allows them to find the tempo
as though it were something that did not require any further searching on their part’. 520 He had remarked earlier that
the composer's greatest concern was ‘to ensure that your piece of music is heard exactly as you yourself heard it when
you wrote it down: that is to say, the composer's intentions must be reproduced with conscientious fidelity so that the
ideas which it contains may be conveyed to the senses undistorted and unimpaired’; 521 this suggests rather that he was
expecting them to find the composer's tempo (variable though that may have been in his own practice).
Weber's, Wagner's, and Brahms's expectations may not have been too unrealistic while they and the musicians who
worked with them were there to provide a yardstick. However, since culture is dynamic and artistic taste is far from
universal, the musicianship that results from training and experience within
518
E. O. Turner, ‘Tempo Variation: With Examples from Elgar’, Music & Letters, 19 (1938), 308–23; Robert Philip, ‘The Recordings of Edward Elgar (1857–1934) :
Authenticity and Performance Practice’, Early Music, 12 (1984), 481–9.
519
Camille Saint-SaËns, Musical Memoires, trans. E. G. Rich (London, 1921), 136–7.
520 ‘über die Aufführung des “TannhÄuser”’, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, v. 144.
521 ‘Der Virtuos und der Künstler’, 169.