The Short

314 ALLA BREVE
same problem bedevilled theorists and performers during succeeding centuries and has continued to challenge modern
scholars and performers.
The present discussion will be confined to the use of these two signs for bars containing notes to the value of a
semibreve. There are a number of ways in which these appear to be employed in the music of the Classical and
Romantic periods. The most commonly encountered are:
1. the two signs seem to be synonymous;
2. ? is twice as fast as ?;
3. ? is considerably faster but not twice as fast as ?;
4. ? is somewhat faster than ?.
In addition, while most authorities saw ? as synonymous with 4/4 (i.e. four crotchet time, Viervierteltakt, etc., since the
time signature 4/4 was rarely used before the nineteenth century) and ? with 2/2 (i.e. two-minim time), others either
regarded ? as another kind of 4/4 or, while categorizing it as 2/2, considered it to be different from the time signatures
2/2 or 2. A selection of explanations of the significance of ? from the middle of the eighteenth century to the end of
the nineteenth century reveals the lack of agreement.
Many writers stated as a firm rule that when ? was marked each note was played ‘twice as fast’ as when the time
signature was ?. Quantz commented: ‘In four-four time it is important to note that if a stroke goes through the ? …
the notes receive a different value, so to speak, and must be played twice as fast as when the ? has no stroke through it.
This metre is called alla breve, or alla cappella.’ And he was insistent that this needed to be stressed, because many
people took the wrong speed through ignorance of the meaning of this time signature, which he observed had become
‘more common in the Galant style of the present day than it was in the past’. 585 Despite the latter comment, Quantz
was only restating a view of alla breve that had been frequently advanced by earlier theorists, including Daniel Merck
and Saint-Lambert. Unfortunately, George Houle in his book Meter in Music 1600–1800 has recently added another
layer of confusion to the question of alla breve by consistently and misleadingly translating these authors’ instructions
to perform it ‘noch einmal so schnell’ and ‘une fois plus vite’ as ‘half as fast again’. 586
This notional doubling of speed was described by many other writers in the second half of the eighteenth century, and
a considerable number of nineteenth-century theorists continued to define it in this way. Schulz observed: ‘The twotwo
or so-called alla breve metre, whose time units consist of two minims, is indicated by the sign ? at the beginning of
the piece where one also takes care to put the heading alla breve. It is performed heavily but twice as fast as its note
values show.’ 587
585
Versuch, V, §13.
586
(Bloomington, Ind., and Indianapolis, 1987).
587
In Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie, art. ‘Takt’.