recurring semi-cadences) the master employs with more than
surprising ease. But such things--even the greatest negligence
(Achtlosigkeit) in the use of common-place phrases and sections--
are explicable and excusable from the nature of this sort of
Allegro, which is not meant to interest by means of Cantilena,
but in which the restless incessant movement is intended to
produce a certain excitement. It is a significant trait in the
Allegro of the overture to Don Giovanni that this restless
movement ends with an unmistakable turn towards the
"sentimental." Here--where the extremes meet, at the point of
contact indicated above--it becomes necessary to modify the tempo
in the bars leading from the overture to the first tempo of the
opera (which is also an alla-breve but a slower one)--and the
pace must be slackened accordingly. But our conductors, in their
customary crude way, generally miss this point in the overture.
We need not, however, now be lead into premature reflections. Let
us merely consider it established that the character of the older
classical or, as I call it, naive Allegro differs greatly from
the new emotional sentimental Allegro, peculiar to Beethoven.
Mozart became acquainted with the orchestral crescendo and
diminuendo at Mannheim, (in 1777) when the orchestra there had
acquired it as a novelty: up to that time the instrumentation of
the old masters shows that, as a rule, nothing was inserted
between the forte and piano sections of the allegro movements
which can have been intended to be played with emotional
expression. Now, how does the true Beethovenian Allegro appear
with regard to this? To take the boldest and most inspired
example of Beethoven's unheard-of innovation in this direction,
the first movement of his Sinfonia eroica: how does this movement
appear if played in the strict tempo of one of the Allegros of