General Structure of Study

The choice of tempo is one of the most personaldecisions a performer must make in his or herinterpretation of any given piece of music. Thetempo set can, quite simply, make an interpretationin the eyes of some, or break it in the eyes ofothers. How do musicians chose appropriate temposfor their performances? Is it merely intuition?Experience? What cues do they draw on, eitherdeliberately or innately, that inform theirdecisions? How do composers transmit the tempos theyhear in their minds or in their performances onpaper to guide others?

More specifically, how should a performer go aboutdetermining a best (or even just plausiblyappropriate) tempo for music from a specifichistorical time period? As is well known, a numberof composers in the last two hundred years or sohave indicated the tempo of their works more or lessprecisely, as the advent of the metronome around theturn of the nineteenth century allowed for a morereliable and consistent communication of tempo, suchas had never before been experienced. But how didBaroque musicians approximately during the centuryand a half before the introduction of the metronomedeal with this issue? This is the line of inquirythat forms the subject of this study.

This question is certainly very difficult to answerbecause of its rather extreme level of complexity.In order to present adequate solutions to problemsand questions, the scope of this study needs to bequite severely limited. For these reasons I haveapplied the following four research boundaries:

• 1. Relative tempo, not absolute tempo;

• 2. The geographic area where the Germanlanguage was primarily spoken, and especially interms of the score analyses of parts 2 and 3,mainly the northern and central parts of(modern-day) Germany;

• 3. Organ/keyboard literature, but excluding itssubcategory of dance music;

• 4. The time period approximately between 1650and 1750 for the music analyzed in parts 2 and 3.The time period of the treatises consulted,however, extends from the Renaissance to the endof the eighteenth century.