TEMPO FOR SINGERS
Sir,-"D.M.’s" Radio Review note in your September 16 issue is excellent on the point he is making-that of keep--ing period-harmony in a song-group. His
citation of Harry Plunkett’Greene’s delightful Interpretation in ‘Song (written nearly 40 years ago, and therefore little known now, singers being notoriously uneducated in music, ‘its theory, or its history) might lead him some time to trot out another of P.G.’s strong points -I mean his insistence on the necessity for strict tempo being kept in about 98 song-bars out of every hundred. Singers seem to think they may vary the tempo at will, their accompanists being merely their very humble followers. P.G. well points out that the accompaniment of an art-song is an essential part of it-often the more important of the two. In "On Wings of Song" and "Who is Sylvia?" for instance, he would not allow the slightest variation of the composer’s time; all three verses of each, together with all ‘interludes, were to have the one unvarying rhythmic flow. I. must have heard these two sung hundreds of times, recorded or studio performed, yet never once have I heard P.G.’s advice followed, Correct tempo seems actually to be frowned on now, yet rhythm is impossible if time is not respected. As P.G. shows in his. book, time in a song must not be varied, except occasionally and for good reason, or where the composer has expressly ordered it. A rallentando or accelerando, he insists, must, still keep the relative time values which the composer has written. e As it seems impossible .to convince singers how horrible their. wobbling sounds to a sensitive ear, can they perhaps be induced to start a movement for getting Schubert and Brahnis sung in proper. time-the. compose! time? "How sour sweet music is, w 9 is broke, and no Proportion ke
F. K.
TUCKER
(Gisborne).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 540, 28 October 1949, Page 5
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310TEMPO FOR SINGERS New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 540, 28 October 1949, Page 5
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