I am reading from C. Rosen - "Beethoven's Piano Sonatas" - Astrolabio (p. 75):
"This is demonstrated even more clearly by the revision of the tempo indications that Beethoven made in the Kyrie in 2/4 of the Mass in C major. Originally marked in the manuscript simply as Andante con moto, it was changed and published as 'Andante con moto quasi allegretto moderato ma non troppo vivace': the indication of a composer who has the almost paranoid certainty that performers will not understand him (a very frequent occurrence, moreover)."
At Beethoven's time, was the difference between Andante and Allegretto not very clear and well-known?
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Carlos
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Reply 2 by Carlos
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Destroyed wrote:
At Beethoven's time, was the difference between Andante and Allegretto not very clear or well-known?
Evidently not, or at least, he thought so, but that is not the problem. The problem is that Beethoven found the Italian indications entirely insufficient to express the character of the piece. In fact, Allegretto, for example, is solely and exclusively a tempo indication, but it cannot say anything more and, simultaneously, it can contain a very strong contradiction (one only needs to think of the Allegretto of the Seventh Symphony: the tempo is allegretto, but the character is anything but "allegretto"). For this reason, in his later years, Beethoven switched to German indications, which were able to express more fully what the piece was meant to signify.
