Section 1: Pre-Reading
Contents
Section 1: Pre-Reading¶
Complete the pre-reading.¶
Please begin by reading the following chapter by José A. Bowen, accessible from the author’s website here. You can also find it in physical format in the book Rethinking Music, available in many college libraries.
Bowen, J. A. (1999). Finding the Music in Musicology: Performance History and Musical Works. In Rethinking Music, ed. by N. Cook & M. Everist. Oxford: Oxford University Press (pp. 424-452).
Pay particular attention to the diagrams on page 435, which constitute an analysis of the tempo of several recordings of the first movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Bowen argues that, since around 1920, performances of the exposition from this work have gradually become faster, in large part due to an increase in the tempo of the second theme. We will investigate if recordings made since the 1990s - the final year considered by Bowen - continue this trend, or whether something has happened since to reverse it.