The Short

Türk's consideration of tempo modification, which is perhaps the most detailed of late eighteenth-century treatments
of the subject, provides valuable information about where such things should be applied. He suggested that
accelerando could be effective:
1. for the most powerful places ‘in pieces which have a character of vehemence, anger, rage, fury and the like’;
2. for single motifs ‘which are repeated more powerfully (usually higher)’;
3. occasionally ‘when gentle feelings are interrupted by a lively passage’; or
4. for a passage that should ‘unexpectedly arouse a violent emotion’.
He considered that ‘tardando’ could produce a telling effect
TYPE OF TEMPO MODIFICATION 379
1. in ‘exceptionally tender, languishing, sad passages in which the feeling is, so to speak, concentrated on a single
point’;
2. before certain fermatas ‘as if the strength is gradually exhausted’;
3. when places ‘towards the end of a piece (or section) are marked with diminuendo, diluendo, smorzando, and the like’;
4. for lead-in figures, not only when they are written in small notes or explicate ‘senza tempo’, but also ‘when the
composer has kept to the normal method of writing a)’ (Ex. 11.1;) or
5. for ‘a delicate idea [matter Gedanke] on its repetition b)’ as in Ex. 11.2.
He also proposed that an abrupt change of speed could sometimes be appropriate. For instance, a somewhat slower
tempo could be adopted
1. for a ‘tender, moving passage between two lively, fiery ideas’ (his Sechs leichte Klaviersonaten provide examples of
this kind marked with Türk's special sign Ç (Ex. 11.3));
Ex. 11.1. Türk, Klavierschule, VI, §69