I'm leaning a sonata by Haydn, or at least the first movement. (in D, XVI:33)

I thought I had it OK for my last lesson, until my teacher asked me what I thought the tempo marking meant. It says Allegro. On most metronomes the bottom end of Allegro is about 120 bmp. So, she set the metronome and away I went, a little bit faster than I had been playing it but still OK. Then she stopped me and pointed out that this was supposed to be 120 crotchets per minute - I was playing quavers. In other words, I was playing it less than half speed! Oh dear.

So I came home and started trying to play at 120 crotchets per minute. It's impossible (or maybe not, eventually, but it is at the moment). Then I did what I should have done before - I checked how other people play it. Most people on YouTube are nearly as slow as me. The fastest recording I have found has about 105 bpm. That is just about achievable - hard but achievable.

Which brings me to my point: Does "allegro" in Haydn really mean the same as it means to a modern metronome manufacturer?

I tend to ignore any metronome suggestions unless they are in modern works when they tend to be accurate. Allegro translates as merry, cheerful, as I am sure you will know. Haydn marks the first movements of so many of his sonatas in this way but the term is usually followed by vivace when he wants to suggest the sort of speed that you are aiming for here. He reserves Allegro Vivace for the last movements which he really does want to race along! Allegro in earlier times didn't imply that the music was to be played quickly and cheerfully, only cheerfully! An allegro at 120 would be too much of a scramble I think.

Just popped into my music room to see what speed I play it .............. about 124 crotchets !

Quantz, in his tome on playing the flute, gives suggestions for approximate speeds without referring to metronome markings - and certainly for Haydn's music I'd be inclined to go very much by what produces a sense of quickness, rather than a number on a metronome. I know that AB exam lists seem to quote somewhat hasty tempi for Scarlatti and other baroque composers, often: even using a harpsichord, one wouldn't rattle off at some of the speeds I've seen suggested. So I'd go for what sounds musically right to you - and if the allegro marked produces a scramble, then I'd tone it down until it is merely quick .

I tend to just take metronome markings as a guidance rather than explicitly. Allegro means different things to me depending on the style, composer, character of the piece, etc.

I'd agree with petrat, in that Haydn tends to mark things at allegro often when it doesn't seem to need to be as fast as we would expect with that marking - when he wants it to be actually fast, he adds a vivace or presto in there.

On top of that - you may well find after a while that you do and can play it at 120 crotchets per minute, but even if that is what you want (you may decide you don't like it that fast), you don't have to be able to do it straight away while you are still learning it!

I was learning a Beethoven finale movement a couple of months ago and being amazed at how fast it was supposed to go - my fingers couldn't possibly do that! I was playing it at half speed even when I was pushing myself. But after a few weeks, when I'd been playing it alot, I decided to check it against the metronome again to see how much more I had to push it to get it to the correct speed and, lo and behold, I had been playing it exactly on the metronome marking! But it came with confidence in my knowledge of the piece and in familiarity with the notes, without my even noticing it ... all things that come with time and practice. So don't stress about it!

I tend to think of Allegro as 'lively' rather than fast.

It's more of a "feel" rather than a "speed".

This is a minefield! When is a composer serious about the tempo, when is he wrong, and when is a wide range of speeds equally suitable? How do the standard tempi vary at different historical periods, and so on, and so on ...

Of course while you are learning a piece you can only play it up to the speed where you start to lose control, and that is bound to be a lot slower than the speed you'll be able to manage when you have properly learned it, or better still, forgotten it and re-learned it twice over, then played it so often that it has become an indelible part of you.

I used to think that Beethoven's markings for the Hammerklavier first movement were insanely fast, and that the only recording that took it at the indicated speed did not work. I now think that Charle's Rosen's recording (at the indicated Metronome mark) is the only one that captures the frantic excitement that Beethoven wanted, and everyone else (Schnabel, Arrau, Brendel, Barenboim, .. all supposedly "great" interpreters of Beethoven) play it at an un-listenably slow tempo (Arrau at barely two-thirds the speed that Beethoven asked for, and Barenboim hardly any faster).

On the other hand the one or two efforts to play certain Chopin etudes at the indicated speeds are unqualified disasters, and they still seem to work best to me at a n otch or two below the metronome settings suggested by Chopin.

The action of Chopin's pianos was shallower and lighter than that of a modern piano. The pianos available to Haydn were shallower and lighter still. That is not an issue with his Allegros, but who knows how fast Haydn expected a Presto to be?

As for Hob XVI/33. I have two recordings. A magnificent one by Hlinka takes the allegro at almost exactly crotchet = 120. An entirely different interpretation by John McCabe takes it at crotchet = 100. It still "works" at the slower speed, but after hearing Hlinka's version it seems to drag and lacks forward drive.

I take it a bit faster at crotchet = 128.

I have my piano lessons in Italian and my teacher hasn't suggested a specific speed for "allegro" - rather a lively pace.

All true enough, but it does not solve the basic problem - one man's "Lively Pace" is another's "Sedate and Steady" (and yet another's ïnsanely fast").

There are other issues too:

- what sounds and feels lively when you are playing often seems much slower to listener - presumably because the player's attention is split between the act of physical co-ordination, and listening to the music that results from it - so less attention available for pure listening.

also,

- the more familiar you are with a piece, the slower it sounds.

My Allegro was neither. I sold it after the exhuast fell off

Very good points indeed, MT.

Has anybody else noticed the tendency of many composers to put in metronome marks which are a little faster than what seems the ideal tempo for their composition? I wonder why this should be so.

Are they male? If so, it'll be because they want people to play their piece and think "Gosh, I wish I could play it at the speed Mr Show-off Composer can play it at"...

You people with time-slowing machines!


Ah yes, the breaking up of the old estates . . .

From Holtz Gedeckt,
"Has anybody else noticed the tendency of many composers to put in metronome marks which are a little faster than what seems the ideal tempo for their composition? I wonder why this should be so."

We are having an all-comers participation 'concert' at my church later this month. One of the offerings is Handel's Sonata No.5 for recorder/flute/oboe (insert favoured instrument) in F maj..

I am doing the accompaniament on harpsichord, and the soloist is a flautist . After several practises, we have come to the mutual decision that the 'allegro' movement means - "whatever speed we are able to get up to by the time of the performance, minus about 5 bpm for safety's sake"
We have also discovered that pragmatism in performance means the change during the allegro movement from quavers to semi-quavers, actually means reducing the speed of the former until we are able accurately to reflect the latter.

I am sure that these 'rules' are set down somewhere or other, but unfortunately have yet to discover where that might be. Perhaps other readers might have come across them during their endeavours to get stuff out under severe constraints as to time available ?

Onward and ..... one way or another...

Chris Baker - Durham UK