The Short

ALLA BREVE 317
Playing the Harpsichord, Pianoforte or Organ it is merely observed that one uses ‘? for slow movements and ? or ɔ for
brisker airs’. 603 The reference to ɔ seems to have been pure antiquarianism at this time, for it is not encountered in late
eighteenth-century music. Even ? seems to have become much less common in compositions written in England
during the early nineteenth century than it had been in the late eighteenth century. Charles Dibdin's Music Epitomized of
1808 gave only ? and 2/4 as species of common time, though the ninth edition, revised by John Jousse, added ? to the
list without specifying any difference; 604 Thomas Valentine's Dictionary, ignoring Continental practice, noted that ?
signified ‘a species of quick common time now seldom used’. 605 Clementi's treatment of time signatures is interesting,
for the 1801 first edition of his Introduction to the Art of Playing on the Pianoforte did not prescribe any difference between ?
and ?, but the revised eleventh edition of 1826 added the following nota bene: A composition marked thus ? was
ANCIENTLY performed as fast again as when marked thus ?, but now ? is performed somewhat faster than ?.’ 606
The Principes élémentaires de musique (c.1800) suggests that in France, too, alla breve may no longer have been seen as
indicating so fast a tempo as it once had. Here it was explained that the duple metre signified by 2 or ? ‘does not differ
in any respect from the quadruple metre [4/4, often written simply as 4 in French music] with regard to the number of
notes which make it up; the only difference which distinguishes it is that one beats it in two because of the rapidity of
movement which one formerly used to give to this kind of metre’. 607 However, this treatise also shows that the strict
proportio dupla aspect of alla breve could sometimes still be valid, for in some of the exercises later in the volume 2 is
used to specify an exact doubling of tempo from 4 or ? and vice versa. 608
Among nineteenth-century writers of a more historical bent, particularly in Germany, there was a tendency to retain
the notion of alla breve meaning that the music should move twice as fast as in ?, despite the practical evidence of its
contrary use by many composers of the period. Gottfried Weber's account provides a good example of how a desire
for clear and logical exposition of the principles of metre, combined with a knowledge of older theoretical writings,
helped to perpetuate this idea. Weber's treatment of the subject shows a
603
p. 5
604
Music Epitomized: A School Book in which the Whole Science of Music is Completely Explained … (London, 1808); 9th edn. (London, [c. 1820]), 37.
605
Dictionary of Terms Used in Music, 2nd edn. (London, 1824), Art. ‘Alla breve’.
606
1st edn., p. 4 and nth edn., p. 4 .
607
Gossec et al., Principes, i. 40.
608
Ibid., pt. 2. In ex. 19 the music changes from 2 (2/2) to 4 (4/4) with the verbal instruction 'here the crotchets take the speed of minims’, and a similar change between ♩
(4/4) and 2 (2/2) takes place in ex. 21. In these exercises ♩ and 4 are apparently used interchangeably for 4/4, though it may be possible that 2 is used deliberately rather
than ♭ when a real doubling of tempo is intended, despite the description of the two signatures as synonymous in the introduction.