Monday 20th September 2020 9.00 – 10.

00

Performance Traditions 1 Lecture – Introduction and Tempo

 Patchwork 1 – completed 12.00 Midday on 14 th October
 Final assessment – an essay of 2500 words outlining ways in which performance practices
have changed in a specific area between two music periods

Different tempi for different works:

 Became a concern during 17th century as possibilities for differing tempi expanded

Time signatures:

 Giacomo Carissimi (1689)

o C – slow
o Cut C twice as fast
o 3/1 for slow pieces
o 3/2 for somewhat livelier ones etc.
 Joachim Quantz still used time signatures as a major consideration

Tempo words:

 1603, Banchieri, Fantasia in echo – adagio, allegro, presto, veloce and prestissimo
 William Crotch (1800) – Grave, Largo, larghetto, Adagio, Lento
 Clementi (1801) – Adagio, Grave, Largo, Lento

 Assai: used in tempo designations to indicate the superlative

 Beethoven and assai – ‘quite’ or ‘fairly’ – ‘allegro assai’ = ‘quite fast’
o Assai – Italian – ‘very’
o Assez – French – ‘quite’

Dance Movements:

 Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Menuet, Gigue, Gavotte, Courante, Polonaise, Bourree,

Chaconne
o Quantz, “The Chaconne is also [like the Sarabande] performed with majesty. One
beat of the [human] pulse goes for two crotchets.”
o Quantz, “The Gigue and the Canarie have the same movement. If written in 6-8 time,
each bar as one [human] pulse beat… the gigue is plated with a short and crisp bow-
stroke.”
 Monday 20th September 2020 9.00 – 10.00

Tempo ordinario / Tempo Giusto:

 Time word / Dance name

 Time signature
 General rate of movement
o C.P.E. Bach – “derived from its general mood together with the fastest notes and
passages”
o Leopold Mozart – “one of the fundamental requirements for the complete musician”
o Beethoven (1826) – “we can hardly have any tempi ordinario any more, now that we
must follow our free inspiration”
 Mass in C, Op. 86 Kyrie: ‘Andante con moto assai vivace quasi Allegretto –
ma non troppo’

The Metronome:

 Invented by Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel in Amsterdam in 1814, who called it a musical

“chronometer”
o Hummel: “they are bound to follow its equal and undeviating motion without
allowing any latitude”
o Mahler: inserted metronomic markings in his successive themes, in part to curtail
the liberties conductors might take
o Brahms: “good friends have talked me into putting them there, for I myself have
never believed that my blood and a mechanical machine go well together.”
o Berlioz: “Mendelssohn said, “it’s a futile device, Any musician who cannot guess the
tempo of a piece just by looking at it is a duffer””.

Recordings by Composers:

 Often reveal tempo fluctuations not indicated in the score