Annotation for Brown, A. Peter

Performance Tradition, Steady and Proportional Tempos, and the First Movements of Schubert's Symphonies

Annotation (by Jonathan D. Flowers):

Brown proposes that proportional tempo relationships inhere between the slow introductions and ensuing allegro sections in the first movements of Schubert's First Second, Third, and Ninth Symphonies. These relationships agree with concepts of tempo espoused in leading performance treatises of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and with historcial accounts of Schubert's preference for steady tempos. Brown supplements this historical evidence with brief rhythmic analyses. In Schubert's First, Third, and Ninth Symphonies, thematic material from the slow introduction returns in doubled note values during the Allegro. Equating quarter notes in the introductions with half notes in the Allegros allows the returning material to recur at its original speed in the later sections. Brown also observes that the slow introductions of Schubert's Third and Ninth Symphonies contain gradual accelerations in surface and harmonic rhythm leading into the allegro sections. The accelerandi commonly heard in modern performances therefore distort the metrically controlled transition Schubert composed into the music. Brown concludes that "Performing these works with a single pulse may not be what we are used to, but the evidence is stronger for this revisionist view rather than [for] the continuation of the present-day tradition." (p.305)