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Updated: June 22, 2025
He saw that when an orchestra carelessly romped through a movement, paying no heed to expression, to nuances of colour, to tempi, it did not really play, interpret, the music; and soon his convictions bore very remarkable fruit. At the theatre he learnt the final lesson needed to prepare him for writing operas of his own.
Several of these he painted upon the walls of his own convent, glorifying that dim place of prayer and fasting with visions of radiant and happy motherhood. One of these may still be seen in the cell sometimes called the Capella Giovanato. It instantly recalls the Tempi Madonna of Raphael, both in the pose of the figure and in the genuineness of feeling exhibited.
Up in the top story hurrying drips beat, like metronomes, all the tempi, from a ponderous adagio to a racing prestissimo. Buckets and jugs and baths filled, and were emptied, and filled again, the old Evans pair waddling to and fro, elated, almost gratified, by the magnitude of their task.
The best of all the later capitals of the Ducal Palace of Venice depends for great part of its value on the richness of a small campanile, which is pointed to proudly by a small emperor in a turned-up hat, who, the legend informs us, is "Numa Pompilio, imperador, edifichador di tempi e chiese."
It appears, therefore, that he could not, if he would, have succeeded on more conventional technical lines. Gradually he developed great strength and intense activity in the middle joints, which enabled him to play with a very close, often overlapping, touch, and to maintain extremely rapid tempi in legato or staccato with perfect ease and little fatigue.
We speak of the character of the piece, and try to arrive at some idea of its meaning. Is it largo then it is serious and soulful; is it scherzo then it should be blithe and gay. We cannot depend on metronome tempi, for they are not reliable. Those given in Schumann are generally all wrong. We try to feel the rhythm of the music, the swing of it, the spirit of it.
He loathed false sentiment, and a man whose taste was formed by Bach and Mozart, who was nurtured by the music of these two giants, could never have indulged in exaggerated, jerky tempi, in meaningless expression. Come, let us be done with this fetish of stolen time, of the wonderful and so seldom comprehended rubato.
There is the same symmetrical repetition in the Ecole des marts, in L'Etourdi, and above all in George Dandin, where the same effect in three tempi is again met with: first tempo, George Dandin discovers that his wife is unfaithful; second tempo, he summons his father and mother-in-law to his assistance; third tempo, it is George Dandin himself, after all, who has to apologise.
The Pope, you see, had the pull in the matter of gorgeous Church ceremonies, but he couldn't have the fertilising barbarians dancing in the Vatican once a week! One more anecdote I must find room for, because it is curiously illustrative in several ways of those tempi passati, che non tornano piu.
Kullak gives Chopin's favorite metronome sign, 176 to the quarter, but this editor rightly believes that "the majestic grandeur is impaired," and suggests 152 instead. The gain is at once apparent. Indeed Kullak, a man of moderate pulse, is quite right in his strictures on the Chopin tempi, tempi that sprang from the expressively light mechanism of the prevailing pianos of Chopin's day.
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