But what about orchestral execution if neither the one nor the other is properly forthcoming?  Where are the modifications of expression to come from if the very means of expression are defective?  Thus, the Mendelssohnian rule of “getting over the ground” (des flotten Daruberhinweggehens) suggested a happy expedient; conductors gladly adopted the maxim, and turned it into a veritable dogma; so that, nowadays, attempts to perform classical music correctly are openly denounced as heretical!

I am persistently returning to the question of tempo because, as I said above, this is the point at which it becomes evident whether a conductor understands his business or not.

Obviously the proper pace of a piece of music is determined by the particular character of the rendering it requires; the question, therefore, comes to this:  does the sustained tone, the vocal element, the cantilena predominate, or the rhythmical movement? (Figuration).  The conductor should lead accordingly.

The Adagio stands to the Allegro as the sustained tone stands to the rhythmical movement (figurirte Bewegung).  The sustained tone regulates the Tempo Adagio:  here the rhythm is as it were dissolved in pure tone, the tone per se suffices for the musical expression.  In a certain delicate sense it may be said of the pure Adagio that it cannot be taken too slow.  A rapt confidence in the sufficiency of pure musical speech should reign here; the languor of feeling grows to ecstasy; that which in the Allegro was expressed by changes of figuration, is now conveyed by means of variously inflected tone.  Thus the least change of harmony may call forth a sense of surprise; and again, the most remote harmonic progressions prove acceptable to our expectant feelings.

None of our conductors are courageous enough to take an Adagio in this manner; they always begin by looking for some bit of figuration, and arrange their tempo to match.  I am, perhaps, the only conductor who has ventured to take the Adagio section of the third movement of the Ninth Symphony at the pace proper to its peculiar character.  This character is distinctly contrasted with that of the alternating Andante in triple time; but our conductors invariably contrive to obliterate the difference, leaving only the rhythmical change between square and triple time.  This movement (assuredly one of the most instructive in the present respect), finally (in the section in twelve-eight time), offers a conspicuous example of the breaking up of the pure Adagio by the more marked rhythms of an independent accompaniment, during which the cantilena is steadily and broadly continued.  In this section we may recognize, as it were, a fixed and consolidated reflex

[Footnote:  In the original:  “Hier erkennen wir das gleichsam fixirte Bild des zuvor nach unendlicher Ausdehnung verlangenden Adagio’s, und wie dort eine uneingeschrankte Freiheit fur die Befriedigung des tonischen Ausdruckes das zwischen zartesten Gesetzen schwankende Maass der Bewegung angab, wird hier durch die feste Rhythmik der figurativ geschmuckten Begleitung das neue Gesetz der Festhaltung einer bestimmten Bewegung gegeben, welches in seinen ausgebildeten Konseqnenzen uns zum Gesetz fur das Zeitmaass des Allegro wird.”]