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The French idea of playing an instrument well is to be able to SING well upon it. The possibility of its being well sung implies that the TRUE TEMPO had been found: and this is the second point which impressed me at the time.
Dreams in dark of God's far heaven Tempo primo; tempo sempre."
Faster, more fitful is the flow of melody, with hostile intruding motive below; it dashes at last into the tragic phase Combats; Passions; Madness; Destruction in very rapid tempo of 2/2 rhythm. Throughout the poem the musical symbols as well as the motives of passion are closely intertwined.
Mendelssohn perfectly agreed with me. We listened. The third movement began and I was terrified on hearing precisely the old Landler tempo; but before I could give vent to my annoyance Mendelssohn smiled, and pleasantly nodded his head, as if to say "now it's all right! Bravo!" So my terror changed to astonishment.
This drink, this fearful draught which has brought him into his present state, is the work of his whole life, the outcome of all his former deeds. The despair which he feels now as his end approaches is expressed in the motive No. 18, in unison in the wood-wind. Both music and words of this soliloquy offer great difficulties and need close study, with special attention to the tempo.
This dust is much valued as a manure, or "top-dressing," and is so constantly dug out and carried away by the natives, that the mounds of ancient towns and villages are rapidly undergoing destruction in all parts of Egypt. For an example of Graeco-Egyptian portrait painting, tempo Hadrian, see p. 291. I have treated briefly of the Noble Arts; it remains to say something of the Industrial Arts.
It numbers nearly two hundred bars in slow tempo, and takes about ten minutes. The argument generally used in defending it is that the action is laid within, and the interest is in the music. But the objection to me at least is not that the action is at a standstill, but that the scene is undramatic, and much of it unmitigated prose.
Not once did she give the impression that she was nursing an idea in the lap of her mentality, but always that she had arrived at a conclusion by an instantaneous process, which would not permit of retraction or expansion. As though by suggestion he could reduce her phrasing to a tempo less quick, his own voice slowed to a drawl.
For nothing is more misleading and useless than to attempt this by a laborious, halting and blundering performance on the piano, while an excellent and expressive execution in the right tempo at once produces the right picture in its varied colours. That is why you are so fortunate in being able to do this with supreme excellence.
"Chopin," Liszt writes, "was the first who introduced into his compositions that peculiarity which gave such a unique color to his impetuosity, and which he called tempo rubato: an irregularly interrupted movement, subtile, broken, and languishing, at the same time flickering like a flame in the wind, undulating, like the surface of a wheat-field, like the tree-tops moved by a breeze."