Shaping Time in Music

Journal/Book: International Journal of Arts Medicine. 1997; 5:

Abstract: The shaping of time in music highly determines its character of movement and expression. This topic comprises an extensive field that has been treated in musicological studies from different points of view by experts such as Kurth (1931), Behne (1972), and Epstein (1995). I would like to focus this article upon some special aspects, in particular new methods of measurement and graphical representation. Composers from the baroque era to the present have especially emphasized the importance of determining the ÒrightÓ tempo in the performance of any composition. Richard Wagner, for instance, wrote in Über das Dirigieren (1869): ÒFrom the choice of tempo you will immediately see whether the conductor truly understood the music or notÓ (Wagner, 6th edition, 1911, pp. 261Ð337). From that statement it seems that there is only one correct tempo for every piece. In practice, however, conductors and players choose very different tempos, and these are correlated to different characters of expression. From this discrepancy questions arise about the liberty and the limits of tempo option in musical performance. In any case the choice of tempo must not be guided by arbitrariness but should be accurately controlled by intention. We at the Mozarteum in Salzburg have therefore developed a special training program for musicians studying conducting.

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