Tomorrow night we are performing Schubert G Major Mass and Beethoven Choral Fantasy - two beloved works - on the season-closing Masterworks Concert at Chowan.
The Fantasy has a couple of transitions at which the tempo, and sometimes meter, change very abruptly. One of the transitions is designed to confuse the ear of the listener - which means it can confuse the people playing it as well!
The following quotation from Ignaz von Seyfried, a friend of Beethoven, applies.
But when, especially in the Scherzos of his symphonies, sudden, unexpected changes of tempo threw all into confusion, he would laugh tremendously, assure the men he had looked for nothing else, that he had been waiting for it to happen, and would take almost childish pleasure in the thought that he had been successful in unhorsing such routined orchestral knights.
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