The Short

Ex. 11.4. Türk, Sechs leichte Klaviersonaten, pt. I, 22
TYPE OF TEMPO MODIFICATION 381
remarks also imply that, in practice, more extreme modifications of the tempo than would have been approved of by
the majority of accomplished musicians were often to be heard. Such things were by no means confined to
performances by less experienced or amateur musicians; they were also associated with soloists of distinction and
reputation. After a visit to Salzburg by the violinist Janitsch and the cellist J. Reicha, for instance, Leopold Mozart, who
had warned against the wilful treatment of tempo in his Violinschule, 732 described their playing in a letter to his son,
praising many aspects of their performance; but he remarked: ‘Both, however, have Becke's fault of dragging the time,
holding back the whole orchestra by a wink and by their movement, and then returning to the original tempo.’ 733 Since
Janitsch and Reicha were both musicians at the Oettingen-Wallerstein court, this suggests the possibility of localized
practices, but it seems likely that such habits were and remained widespread.
Discussion of tempo modification involving alteration of the pulse of the music assumed some prominence in music
journals and instruction books in the first few decades of the nineteenth century, suggesting that the appropriateness,
or otherwise, of this expressive resource was very much a live issue at that time. The writers were all, more or less,
concerned to caution restraint. In the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung of 1804 Friedrich Guthmann considered ‘the
localized hurrying and hesitating which the player allows himself out of feeling or principle without the composer
having clearly indicated it’, observing: ‘the beat is the means by which we are so much the more freely and better able
to express our feelings. It should not, however, inhibit us.’ Developing the idea that the performer should be impelled
by the emotion of the music, he continued: ‘is it to be wondered at if, without himself being aware of it, he gradually
hurries or drags? Would it be right, would it make the proper effect if he did not do it… (Naturally I am only talking
about solo playing and singing.)’ But unlike Türk he stopped short of giving detailed information about the sorts of
circumstances in which tempo modification might take place, merely
732
See esp. ch. XII, §20.
733
Anderson, The Letters of Mozart, 455.