What are your favorite accelerandos?

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sbeckmesser
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What are your favorite accelerandos?

Post by sbeckmesser »

Speeding up during a piece of music is a special and surprisingly rare device. It is generally reserved by composers for special moments. Which of these moments are favorites of yours?

I'm setting the following criteria for selection:

1. the acceleration MUST be EXPLICITLY called for in the score either by the word "accelerando" or similar word (e.g. "stringendo) or phrase or by equivalents in other languages. It would be most helpful if a score for the piece were available at IMSLP or at the European IMSLP server.

2. "Traditional" accelerations made in performances that are not explicitly called for in the score (e.g. the introduction to the first movement of the Schubert "Great" C-major Symphony, or the Act I Prelude to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde) DO NOT QUALIFY. If you submit one of these you must designate it as such.

3. The acceleration may consist of a transitional passage from one fixed tempo to another, or may continue through to the end of a piece or movement.

4. The acceleration MUST BE CONTINUOUS and not be a graded series of ever faster tempo or metronome markings unless a continuous change of tempo is explicitly called by other means (usually verbal). Check the score!

Happy hunting!

--Sixtus

PS: One of my favorites starts at bar 9 after Rehearsal 129 of Richard Strauss' Sinfonia Domestica. The pace continues to get faster until a sudden shift of tempo still faster at 132 + 11, a fast fixed tempo that continues through 136 (where some conductors -- not Strauss himself -- unconscionably slow down) through to a further accelerando after 138. The tempo only relaxes at 139. This acceleration up to and even through a climactic passage I find characteristic of authentic late-Romantic performance practice (you find this in the first editions of some Bruckner symphonies, for example, before the Urtext guys got hold of them). There's a similar accelerating passage right before the recap of the big horn theme in Strauss' Don Juan.
allegroamabile
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Re: What are your favorite accelerandos?

Post by allegroamabile »

That's a great question, and one that I haven't given much thought. The last movement of Beethoven 5 comes to mind, probably one of the most famous accelerandos written. The coda of Dvorak's Eighth Symphony is also one of my favorites, especially how the music calms down and almost comes to a halt right before the rest of the orchestra comes in and plays the opening theme one last final time.
sbeckmesser
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Re: What are your favorite accelerandos?

Post by sbeckmesser »

Great suggestions! I agree with the effectiveness of the Beethoven 5 accelerando (between the recap and the coda of the 4th movement) but I think the accelerando in the finale of Beethoven's 9th is even more famous and even more spectacular probably because the span between the initial and final tempos is wider (from the Poco adagio of the vocal soloists to the Prestissimo of the final section). And the hair-raising nature of the Dvorak 8th passage (measure 356ff in the Finale) I find comes at least as much from the chromatic sliding upwards as from the push on the tempo.

--Sixtus
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