CORRECT UNDERSTANDING OF THE TEMPO
To give the pupil the feeling for the correct tempo of a composition is more difficult than to teach him to understand rhythm. Our best musicians, whose merits deserve the fullest acknowledgment, often fail here, making the tempo of a piece of music either too slow or too quick, and so weakening its whole effect. This happens especially with the old compositions which preceded the introduction of the metronome. The old Italian vocal compositions are in this respect treated the worst by our musicians, who belong to the strictly classical school. The character of these pieces is prevailingly sentimental, and the tempi were not so quick then as now. If a piece thus composed in slow time is set, without reference to its sentiment, to the quickest possible tempo, it becomes ordinary and vulgar in character; the most beautiful adagio may in this way be degraded to a street-ballad. The songs of our modern composers have to be sung to a quicker tempo than that to which they are set, or they are tedious and wearisome. This is particularly the case with the compositions of Schubert, and the whole effect of his beautiful songs is often ruined by a degree more or less too rapid. Singing too slowly, or in false tempo, is now-a-days a very prevalent fault. And yet the singer has in the words a surer guide than is granted to the instrumental performer. Therefore, by well considering these and getting them by heart without the music, as if they were the outpouring of his own feelings, he will be most likely to strike the correct tempo in singing them. In this way many of our recent favorite songs gain a somewhat fresher tempo than that at which they are usually sung. The choice of the time, being dependent upon the taste of the artist, requires special attention and study.
Although the tempo is usually indicated by some designation, as, for example, allegro, adagio, &c., yet the allegro or adagio may be given with different degrees of quickness, and the designations still be perfectly correct. We have no precise designations for the nicer degrees of tempo, and yet a very slight degree has an influence upon the character of the piece. The metronome, by which in instrumental music the tempo is defined, is only occasionally used as a guide in vocal compositions, because the singer may be guided by the words and by the sentiment which the words indicate.
The tempi must be ascertained by a knowledge of the composers, and by reference to the periods in which their compositions first appeared. It would be an error to play an andante by Bach or Haydn like one of Chopin’s or Hiller’s, or sing the allegro of an aria by Pergolese or Caraffa as quickly as the allegro of one of Meyerbeer’s arias. But whether a piece of music be light and ornamental in character, or heavy and labored, weak or powerful, quiet or passionate, depends on rhythm and tempo.