The Short

384 TEMPO MODIFICATION
a nicety in time, Ph. Em. Bach did it likewise, and Clementi, Romberg, and Rode still do it!… Although thete may
occasionally be a few places in a solo part which, through a some-what increased or decreased rapidity of
movement, are not merely apparently but also actually able to gain in respect of the expression: at least in these the
case cannot by far be so frequent, or by far so bad, as when such a so-called piquant solo player deviates from the
beat; and a sudden holding back and pulling out, a sudden alteration of the tempo, perhaps to the extent of a third,
if not a half of the measure, as one now not infrequently hears, definitely can and may absolutely never and nowhere
be tolerated. 742
There can be little doubt that despite the constant warnings from respected authorities about the dangers of excessive
tempo modification, and the examples of many leading performers such as Hummel and Spohr, an everincreasing
number of solo players and singers went far beyond what these musicians would have regarded as tasteful. By the
1830s there are signs that, as Koch had feared a generation earlier, this sort of thing had become so general that it was
perceived by the public as the norm. In 1833 J. Feski observed:
Ritardando and accelerando alternate all the time. This manner has already become so fixed in the minds of the
musical public that they firmly believe a diminuendo must be slowed down and a crescendo speeded up; a tender
phrase (e.g. in an allegro) will be performed more slowly, a powerful one faster. At times this kind of treatment may
well be applicable; but how to determine where requires very deep insight into the composition and very correct
feeling. Furthermore, the compositions of the older composers tolerate this type of treatment extremely rarely, and
the newer ones are well enough endowed with markings of this kind! In these, on the other hand, one misses the
exalted calm, in which the older composers distinguished themselves. 743
A few years later, Czerny, employing the term ‘tempo rubato’ in the looser sense that was by that time accepted in
common parlance, complained: ‘tempo rubato, (that is the arbitrary retardation or quickening of the degree of
movement) is now often employed even to caricature’, and he noted that in playing the first movement of a Hummel
concerto many soloists alternate allegro for the first subject with andante for the second and presto for the concluding
section, ‘whilst Hummel himself performed his compositions in such strict time, that we might nearly always have let
the metronome beat time to his playing’. 744 Similar remarks were made about Mendelssohn's playing. As Sir George
Grove explained:
Strict time was one of his hobbies. He alludes to it, with an eye to the sins of Hiller and Chopin, in aletter of May 23,
1834, and somewhere else speaks of ‘nice strict tempo’ as something particularly pleasant. After introducing some
rallentandos in conducting the introduction to Beethoven's second symphony, he excused himself by saying that ‘one
could not always be good,’* and that he had felt the inclination too strongly to resist it. In playing, however, he
never himself interpolated a ritardando or suffered it in anyone else.** It
742
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 10 (1807–8), 439.
743
Caecilia, 15 (1833), 270.
744
Piano Forte School: Second Supplement, 29.