1 Letter from Richard Wagner to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, 9 February 1879, reproduced in Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (ed. and trans.), Selected Letters of Richard Wagner (London, 1987), 890.

2 Richard Wagner, trans. E. Dannreuther, On Conducting (London, 1897), 34.

3 These recent studies fall broadly into three categories: (i) studies of cognition: these include Jacob Feldman, David Epstein and Whitman Richards, ‘Force Dynamics of Tempo Change in Music’, Music Perception, 10, 2 (Winter 1992), 185–203; Bruno H. Repp, ‘Relational Invariance of Expressive Microstructure Across Global Tempo Changes in Music Performance: An Exploratory Study’ and Peter Desain and Hankjan Honig, ‘Does Expressive Timing in Music Performance Scale Proportionally with Tempo?’, in Psychological Research, 56, 4 (1994), 267–84 and 285–92; Bruno H. Repp: ‘On Determining the Basic Tempo of an Expressive Music Performance’, Psychology of Music, 22, 2 (1994), 157–67); (ii) studies of performance practice, using biographical information and recorded and notated sources: see, for example, discussions in Clive Brown, Classical and Romantic Performing Practice 1750–1900 (Oxford, 1999); David Rowland, ‘Chopin's Tempo Rubato in Context’, in Chopin Studies 2, ed. John Rink and Jim Samson (Cambridge, 1994), 199–213; Michael Musgrave and Bernard D. Sherman (eds.), Performing Brahms: Early Evidence of Performance Style (Cambridge, 2003); and (iii) tempo in relation to structure and genre: see John Rink, ‘Playing in Time: Rhythm, Metre and Tempo in Brahms's Fantasien Op.116’, in The Practice of Performance: Studies in Musical Interpretation, ed. Rink (Cambridge, 1995), 254–82. For a useful bibliography of tempo studies pre-1985, see Jonathan D. Kramer, ‘Studies of Time and Music: A Bibliography’, Music Theory Spectrum, 7 (1985), 104–6.

4 See, for example: Clive Brown, ‘Performing Practice’ and Christopher Fifield, ‘Conducting Wagner: The Search for Melos’, in Wagner in Performance, ed. Barry Millington and Stewart Spencer (New Haven and London, 1992), 117–19 and 1–14, respectively; David Breckbill, ‘Performance Practice’ and ‘Conducting’ in The Wagner Compendium: A Guide to Wagner's Life and Music, ed. Barry Millington (London, 1992), 350–8 and 368–74; and José A Bowen, ‘Mendelssohn, Berlioz, and Wagner as Conductors: The Origins of the Ideal of “Fidelity to the Composer”’, Performance Practice Review, 6, 1 (Spring 1993), 77–88. For an overview of early recordings and tempo fluctuation, see Robert Philip, Early Recordings and Musical Style: Changing Tastes in Instrumental Performance, 1900–1950 (Cambridge, 1992), Chapter 1, ‘Flexibility of tempo’, 7–36; Philip (217–20) suggests how early recorded tempi might relate to nineteenth-century performance practice.

5 See Egon Voss, Die Dirigenten der Bayreuther Festspiele (Regensburg, 1976), 97.

6 Der Ring des Nibelungen. Ein Bühnenfestspiel für drei Tage und einen Voraband. Im Pertrauen auf den deutschen Geist entworfen und zum Ruhme seines erhabenen Wohlthäters des Königs Ludwig II von Bayern vollendet von Richard Wagner (Mainz, 1873). I would like to thank Peter Horton and the staff of the RCM library for making this source available.

7 The remaining scores include Die Walküre, Siegfried, Tannhäuser, Die Meistersinger and Tristan und Isolde.

8 Edward Dannreuther, Richard Wagner: His Tendencies and Theories (London, 1873); Wagner (trans. Dannreuther), ‘The Music of the Future’: A Letter to M. Frédéric Villot (London, 1873); Wagner (trans. Dannreuther), On Conducting (Über das Dirigieren): A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music (London, 1887).

9 The membership of this private society consisted of Dannreuther, Walter Bache, Karl Klindworth, Frits Hartvigson, Alfred Hipkins, and the painter and amateur singer W. Kümpel. Their meetings were devoted principally to performances of progressive repertoire (particularly Liszt and Wagner), followed by critical discussion; see Michael Allis, ‘Challenging the Victorian Musical Soundscape: “Progressive” Repertoire and “The Working Men's Society”’, in Victorian Soundscapes Revisited, ed. Martin Hewitt and Rachel Cowgill, Leeds Working Papers in Victorian Studies 9 (Leeds, 2007), 83–97. For a detailed consideration of Dannreuther's contribution to British musical life, see Jeremy Dibble, ‘Edward Dannreuther and the Orme Square Phenomenon’, in Music and British Culture, 1785–1914: Essays in Honour of Cyril Ehrlich ed. Christina Bashford and Leanne Langley (Oxford, 2000), 275–98. Bache's significance in terms of Liszt reception in Britain is discussed in Michael Allis, ‘Promoting the Cause: Liszt Reception and Walter Bache's London Concerts 1865–87’, Journal of the American Liszt Society, 52 (Spring 2002), 1–37, ‘Promotion through Performance: Liszt's Symphonic Poems in the London Concerts of Walter Bache’, in Europe, Empire, and Spectacle in Nineteenth-Century Britain ed. Julian Rushton and Rachel Cowgill (Aldershot, 2006), 55–75, and ‘“Remarkable Force, Finish, Intelligence and Feeling”: Reassessing the Pianism of Walter Bache’, in The Piano in Nineteenth-Century British Culture: Intruments, Performers and Repertoire ed. Therese Ellsworth and Susan Wollenberg (Aldershot, 2007), 193–216.

10 See Dibble, ‘Edward Dannreuther and the Orme Square Phenomenon’, 284.

11 The timings are prefaced by Dannreuther's note, ‘The foregoing tempi were those taken at the first full dress rehearsal Sat. July 29. 1876’. I am grateful to Jeremy Dibble for confirming the authenticity of this handwriting.

12 One wonders whether the particular nature of Das Rheingold was felt to merit such meticulous documentation of tempi, or whether Dannreuther made similar annotations for Die Walküre, Siegfried and Gotterdämmerung, selections from which were also included in the 1877 Wagner Festival; the two of these scores housed in GB-Lcm (Die Walküre and Siegfried) contain no such markings. Benno Hollander, a violinist in the 1877 Festival orchestra, recalled in the Daily Telegraph in February 1939: ‘Richter saved the concerts. The first rehearsals had been taken by Dannreuther who was hopeless – the sort of conductor who cannot take his head out of the score’; this quotation is reproduced in Christopher Fifield, True Artist and True Friend: A Biography of Hans Richter (Oxford, 1993), 464.

13 There are no obvious parallels in the musicological literature with Dannreuther's distinctive method of documenting live, rather than recorded, performance. More familiar is the method of using a stopwatch to denote timings of specific movements or complete musical works, such as George Smart's annotated programmes documenting tempi in performances (primarily in London) from 1819 to 1843, as discussed by Nicholas Temperley in ‘Tempo and Repeats in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Music and Letters, 47, 4 (October 1966), 323–36. These types of timings are in themselves often estimates, however, given that they are frequently calculated to the nearest minute or half minute, and that in some cases they have been subject to further estimation. Bernard Sherman, for example, reinterprets documented timings from early performances of Brahms's music to suggest what they might have represented if they had not included sectional repeats; see Sherman, ‘Metronome Marks, Timings, and Other Period Evidence Regarding Tempo in Brahms’, in Performing Brahms, ed. Musgrave and Sherman, 113–17.

14 There are some parallels here with Thomas Higgins's suggestion of how Chopin's metronome markings might be understood; see Higgins, ‘Tempo and Character in Chopin’, The Musical Quarterly, 59, 1 (January 1973), 116: ‘It would seem more reasonable to suppose that when the time came to set the tempo, he [Chopin] simply began to play the piece, and then measured the basic pulse. If this is the way Chopin used the metronome, then the player makes a mistake to set this device and try to match its rate over long stretches … phrase endings, natural punctuation, and the charming hesitations that marked Chopin's own playing – all should be sensibly excepted as beyond the scope of the metronome.’

15 Brown, ‘Performance Practice’, 118.

16 Wagner, On Conducting, 34. Although the majority of Wagner's examples in his essay are from orchestral works (or operatic overtures), Wagner does, 88–9, highlight a lack of authority on the part of operatic conductors, which includes the choice of tempo: ‘They [operatic conductors] are very accommodating and complaisant towards vocalists, female and male, for whom they are glad to make matters comfortable; they arrange the tempo, introduce fermatas, ritardandos, accelerandos … whenever and wherever a vocalist chooses to call for such. Whence indeed are they to derive the authority to resist this or that absurd demand? … if anything worthy of admiration is produced in the operatic world it is generally due to the right instincts of the vocalists, just as in the orchestra the merit lies almost entirely in the good sense of the musicians.’

17 All musical examples reproduce passages from Wagner, Das Rheingold, vocal score (London, Mainz, Brussels and Paris: Schott & Co., 1882).

18 Wagner, 37.

19 Dannreuther, ‘Beethoven and His Works: A Study’, Macmillan's Magazine, July 1876, 205–6. In relation to Über das Dirigieren, however, Dannreuther was also aware of some problematic implications of Wagner's theories; in Richard Wagner: His Tendencies and Theories, 88–9, he noted, ‘One cannot shrink from the confession that there is very serious danger in advocating modification of tempo. Are we to allow, it may be asked, every man who “wags a stick” to do as it listeth him with the tempi of our glorious instrumental music? Are we to permit him to make “effects” in Beethoven's symphonies as his reckless fancy may dictate? To which I know of no answer, except it be, ‘Tis a pity men should occupy positions they are not fit for.’

20 In Wagner's criticisms of Richter, some of which are reproduced in this article, there are no suggestions of any inflexibility in tempo in relation to Das Rheingold. However, see Eva Ducat, Another Way of Music (London, 1928), 122: ‘Richter's beat was marvellous in its exactitude and precision; and by this rigid adherence to the tempo, the form in which he built his symphonies was as straight and true as some great work of architecture. As his aim was to play the music as it was written, he did not find it necessary to vary his beat where no alteration of tempo was marked.’ For further suggestions of Brahms's critical view of Richter's relatively inflexible approach to tempo, see various references in Musgrave and Sherman, Performing Brahms, particularly Robert Pascall and Philip Weller, ‘Flexible Tempo and Nuancing in Orchestral Music: Understanding Brahms's View of Interpretation in his Second Piano Concerto and Fourth Symphony’, 232–4 and 238. Interestingly, Wagner's On Conducting, 83, includes criticisms of Brahms's ‘painfully dry, inflexible and wooden’ performances at the keyboard, which would have been improved by ‘a little of the oil of Liszt's school’.

21 See Voss, Die Dirigenten der Bayreuther Festspiele, 97. Other Bayreuth timings for Tietjens's Das Rheingold include 2′17″ in 1934 and 1938, and 2′11″ in 1939.

22 Voss, 97.

23 The Yorkshire Post, 31 July 1908.

24 Voss, Die Dirigenten, 97.

25 For a useful overview of the relationship between tempo and metre in Wagner's music, particularly in relation to beating two or four beats in a bar, see Brown, Classical and Romantic Performing Practice, 331–5.

26 Fifield, True Artist and True Friend, 116.

27 See diary entries of 21 and 23 June 1876, in Martin Gregor-Dellin and Dietrich Mack (eds.), Geoffrey Skelton (trans.), Cosima Wagner's Diaries, 2 vols. (London, 1978, 1980), I, 912–13.

28 Letter from Wagner to Richter, 23 June 1876, reproduced in Fifield, True Artist and True Friend, 108–9; Fifield, 118, echoing Wagner, ascribes Richter's deficiencies to a ‘lack of dramatic awareness’ as a young conductor. For a further criticism of a crotchet-centred approach, see Wagner, On Conducting, 21–2, which (discussing the Tannhäuser overture) refers to ‘thoroughly incompetent persons who are particularly shy of Alla breve time, and who stick to their correct and normal crotchet beats, four in a bar, merely to shew [sic] they are present and conscious of doing something’.

29 Cosima Wagner's Diaries, I, 921, Saturday 9 September 1876. See also Cosima Wagner, I, 955, Wednesday 28 March 1877, where Cosima implies a mistrust of Richter's artistic judgement in general: ‘R[ichter] praises Die Walküre in Vienna – from my father's account, I gather that it lacks all dedication and nobility’.

30 Cosima Wagner's Diaries, II, 131, Wednesday 7 August 1878.

31 See Fifield, True Artist and True Friend, 117: ‘Her [Cosima's] differences with Richter and her knowledge that he would never subordinate himself to her nor tolerate any interference with his musical interpretation were all overruled by her strong desire by then to have around her anyone who had worked for her late husband’.

32 Cosima Wagner's Diaries, II, 917, 29 July 1876.

33 See Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Werke Band 10, I–II, Das Rheingold WWV 86A … herausgeben von Egon Voss (Mainz, 1988–89), vii. These suggestions for increased tempi, detailed throughout Voss's edition as ‘[1876]’, are documented in an amalgam of piano reduction sources: one with entries by Henriette Glasenapp, a second related to the Bayreuth Ring of 1896, with annotations by Julius Kniese, Hermann Levi, Felix Mottl and Heinrich Porges (detailing Wagner's approach in 1876), and Mottl's piano reduction of Das Rheingold published by Peters in 1914. Voss notes (p. vii), that these additional suggestions ‘may in part be based only on memory, and … it is by no means impossible that they were relevant only to conditions in 1876: in other words … Wagner himself would not have incorporated them into a printed edition’.

34 Stanford, Pages from an Unwritten Diary (London, 1914), 171. Henry Smart also identified the adoption of quick tempi as a feature of Wagner's interpretations, as ‘he [Wagner] takes all quick movements faster than anybody else’, although this was balanced by his taking ‘all slow movements slower than anybody else’; see the Sunday Times 17 June 1855, 3. Sir Thomas Beecham, A Mingled Chime (London, 1944), 36, also noted the German public's unrest in 1899 in relation to Siegfried Wagner's Ring cycle: ‘The malcontents … deplored the engagements of singers who had little knowledge of the true Wagnerian style, as well as conductors whose addiction to slow tempi weakened that force and liveliness which Richard had always demanded in the rendering of his music’.

35 See Philip, Early Recordings and Musical Style, 35–6: ‘The degree of acceleration heard in many pre-war recordings would be considered uncontrolled in modern performance. One of the results of this modern caution is that the maximum tempos within movements are usually slower in post-war than in pre-war performances, so that the average tempo of a movement has generally dropped. And what is true within movements is true also of complete multi- movement works. In pre-war performances, fast movements were often very fast, so that the contrast between fast and slow movements was very great.’

36 See Joseph Sulzer, Ernstes und Heiteres aus der Erinnerungen eines Wiener Philharmonikers (Vienna and Leipzig, 1910), 27–8: ‘Ungemein lehrreich und von höchstem Interesse waren die fachlichen Aperçus Wagners während der Probe zu “Lohengrin”. Unter anderem ersuchte er den Beckennisten, im 54. Takte des Vorspieles nicht “t s ch I n n”, sondern “t s ch i – i – i – n” (klingen lassend) zu schlagen. Auch nahm Wagner das Tempo des D-dur Nachspieles im Brautchore des dritten Aktes wesentlich langsamer, als man dies gewöhnt war, und motivierte dies durch die Bemerkung: “Es würde sonst eine unerwünschte Aehnlichkeit mit …” Das weitere verlor sich in ein unverständiches Murmeln, dürfte sich jedoch auf das Frühlingslied ohne Worte von Mendelssohn bezogen haben, an das die erwähnte Stelle (allerdings leise) erinnert.’ See also James Deaville and Evan Baker (eds.), George R. Fricke (trans.), Wagner in Rehearsal 1875–1876: The Diaries of Richard Fricke (Stuyvesant, 1998), 76, a diary entry of 22 June 1876: ‘Regarding the rehearsals of June 20 and 21: I still must report that Wagner has changed everything that he had blocked on the 19th. He went further, he even changed the tempo of the orchestra; also where Brünnhilde sings “Live, woman, for the sake of love,” while yesterday he had wanted them to do it very slowly, he demanded a complete change’; for the original German text, see Richard Fricke, Bayreuth vor dreissige Jahren: Erinnerungen an Wahnfried und aus dem Festspielhause (Dresden, 1906), 107.

37 Naxos Historical 8.110047–48, EMI CZS 7 67124 2, Music & Arts CD-4009 (13), Decca 455 556–2, Deutsche Grammophon 457 781–2, Philips 434 421–2.

38 Georg Solti, ‘A Few Words from the Conductor’, in John Louis DiGaetani, Penetrating Wagner's Ring: An Anthology (New York, 1978), 408.

39 Heinrich Porges, Wagner Rehearsing the ‘Ring’: An Eye-Witness Account of the Stage Rehearsals of the First Bayreuth Festival, trans. Robert L. Jacobs (Cambridge, 1983), 7.

40 Wagner, On Conducting, 65–6; Wagner, ibid., 39, was also critical of Julius Rietz's approach to tempo in Die Meistersinger, where ‘he [Rietz] made a guess at the main tempo, chose the broadest nuance of it, and spread this over the whole, beating the steadiest and stiffest square time from beginning to end!’, thus failing to adopt the essential principle of tempo modification.

41 See, for example, Robert Donington, Wagner's Ring and its Symbols, 3rd edn (London, 1989), 35–44; Warren Darcy, Wagner's ‘Das Rheingold’ (Oxford, 1993), Chapter 6, ‘Creatio ex Nihilo: The Prelude’, 62–86; Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Wagner Androgyne: A Study in Interpretation, trans. Stewart Spencer (Princeton, 1993), 53–5.

42 Porges, Wagner Rehearsing the ‘Ring’, 7–8.

43 Pierre Boulez, ‘Das Rheingold’, sleeve notes for the 1997 Philips reissue of the 1956 recording of Das Rheingold (434 421–2), 15.

44 Although Knappertsbusch also adopts progressively quicker tempi at the beginning of each of these sections, his climactic tempo in bars 49–80 leads to an inevitable reduction of pace for the semiquavers.

45 Sol Babitz, ‘The Problem of Wagnerian Difficulties – Playing Violin Passages’, in DiGaetani, Penetrating Wagner's Ring, 413; Babitz's brief examples all involve arpeggiated motifs from Die Walküre. See also George Bernard Shaw, ‘Hans Richter and his Blue Ribbon’, in Shaw's Music: The Complete Musical Criticism of George Bernard Shaw ed. Dan H. Laurence, 3 vols. (London, 1981), I, 210: ‘Then he [Richter] let slip the secret that the scores of Wagner were not to be taken too literally. “How” exclaimed the average violinist in anger and despair “is a man to be expected to play this reiterated motive, or this complicated figuration, in demisemiquavers at the rate of sixteen in a second? What can he do but go a-swishing up and down as best he can?” “What indeed?” replied Herr Richter encouragingly. “That is precisely what is intended by the composer.” So the relieved violinists went swishing up and down, and the public heard the hissing of Loki's fires in it and were delighted; whilst those who had scores and were able to read them said “Oh! that's how it's done, is it?” and perhaps winked.’ For a counterview of Babitz's position, see Erich Leinsdorf, The Composer's Advocate: A Radical Orthodoxy for Musicians (New Haven and London, 1981), 149–50; discussing the ‘Fire Music’ in Die Walküre, Leinsdorf notes: ‘For some critical musicians those few pages have seemed examples of Wagner's disregard of technical execution: the violin passages have been considered unplayable. This is only true if the tempos are wrong. The composer did not take pains to write at least 128 notes for the violins in some hundred bars, including much other detail, only to obtain an al fresco effect. The meticulous care with which the winds and harp change harmony on the eighth sixteenth note while the violins with their thirty-seconds go precisely at the same point into matching harmonies is not just for show, nor are the players expected to fake their way through … These passages of the “Fire Music” are indeed difficult – but they are playable and meant to be played. Of course, the violinists must practise them and the tempo must be right.’

46 Porges, 27–8.

47 See Donington, Wagner's Ring and its Symbols, 302.

48 Donington, 299.

49 One assumes that, for clarity, the anvil motif was performed at a slightly slower speed; even Bodanzky's anvils lack clarity at a dotted crotchet speed of c. 124.

50 Donington, Wagner's Ring and its Symbols, 69.

51 Remaining quaver speeds are 112 (Furtwängler) and 116–118 (Boulez and Karajan).

52 Porges, Wagner Rehearsing the ‘Ring’, 11.

53 Porges, 12. Voss, in his edition of Das Rheingold, i.99, includes the following: ‘Das Walhall-Thema mit großartig-erhabener Ruhe, im Charakter des Adagio, aber ohne jedes Schleppen zu spielen. Jedesmal, wenn es später im Dialog vorkommt, ist es leichter im Tempo zu nehmen [1876]’.

54 Donington, Wagner's Ring, 66, and William E. McDonald, ‘What Does Wotan Know? Autobiography and Moral Vision in Wagner's Ring’, 19th-Century Music, 25, 1 (Summer 1991), 39.

55 Porges, Wagner Rehearsing the ‘Ring’, 16.

56 Donington, Wagner's Ring, 77.

57 Details of the remaining recordings include crotchet speeds of 58–52–52 (Bodanzky), 52–6 (Knappertsbusch), 58–56 (Solti) and 58–60 (Karajan).

58 Porges, Wagner Rehearsing the ‘Ring’, 12.

59 Richter apparently employed a crotchet speed of 72 for the use of Tarnhelm, whilst Alberich's previous reference to the ‘Tarnhelm’ music in bar 2601, ‘Den hehlenden Helm’, had a documented crotchet speed of 100. In the recorded examples, the majority of conductors also take Alberich's initial reference at a significantly quicker speed (apart from Knappertsbusch, whose initial reference is slightly slower); Karajan makes only a slight distinction (with crotchet speeds of 78 and 72), and only Boulez adopts exactly the same tempi for these two passages – a crotchet speed of c. 60.

60 Porges, Wagner Rehearsing the ‘Ring’, 20.

61 Donington, Wagner's Ring, 108.

62 Crotchet speeds for this paragraph are as follows: 74–72–62 (Bodanzky), 58–62–60, 54–50 (Furtwängler), 66–70–68, 62–58 (Knappertsbusch), 63–67–65, 54–50 (Solti), 54–6, 60, 56–52 (Karajan), 70–72, 62 (Boulez).

63 David Epstein, ‘Tempo Relations: A Cross-Cultural Study’, Music Theory Spectrum, 7 (1985), 37.

64 Sandra Corse, Wagner and the New Consciousness; Language and Love in the Ring (London and Toronto, 1990), 104.

65 Solti, ‘A Few Words from the Conductor’, 407.

66 Porges, Wagner Rehearsing the ‘Ring’, 29.

67 The various crotchet speeds are: 118 (Bodanzky), 102–110 (Furtwängler), 94 (Knappertsbusch), 126 (Solti), 116–120 (Karajan), 102–116 (Boulez).

68 Initial dotted crotchet speeds (bars 1984–6) are as follows: 114 (Bodanzky), 98 (Furtwängler), c. 88 (Knappertsbusch), 106 (Solti), c. 98 (Karajan and Boulez). Comparison with the speeds in the previous footnote show that Bodanzky and Knappertsbusch retain a close relationship with the momentum established at the beginning of the scene.

69 Initial crotchet speeds range from Knappertsbusch (the slowest at 86), to 92 (Furtwängler), 94 (Karajan), 102–104 (Boulez), 104 (Solti) and finally Bodanzky at 110.

70 The tempo range of each of these tempo markings in the recorded examples is as follows: at the immer schneller, 92 (Furtwängler) to 112–118 (Bodanzky); at the etwas langsamer, c. 52 (Furtwängler/Karajan) to an initial height of c. 66 (Knappertsbusch); at the wieder schnell, speeds decelerate from an initial tempo – the slowest being 92 (Knappertsbusch), the quickest 114 (Bodanzky/Solti).

71 Boulez, ‘Das Rheingold’, 20.

72 Porges, 31. See also Voss (ed.), Das Rheingold, II, 229, ‘Mit ruhiger, sich selbst beherrschende Würde [1876]’.

73 Knappertsbusch and Karajan both range from crotchet speeds of 72 to 56; the remaining Mäßig langsam speeds are 75–54 (Bodanzky), 56 (Furtwängler), 65–58 (Solti) and 60–54 (Boulez).

74 Langsam und schleppend speeds are as follows: 54–62 (Bodanzky), 40–45 (Furtwängler), 55–58 (Knappertsbusch), c. 28–29 (Solti), 35–37 (Karajan), 40–35 (Boulez).

75 Comparative crotchet speeds here are 56–58 (Furtwängler), 63–78 (Knappertsbusch), and the three similar tempi of 62–65 (Solti), 60–65 (Karajan), 63–60 (Boulez).

76 Richter's dotted minim speed of 58 is only marginally quicker than Bodanzky's c. 56; however, the remaining recorded examples are considerably slower, including 38–42 (Furtwängler), 44 (Knappertsbusch), 44–50 (Solti), 44–46 (Karajan) and c. 48 (Boulez).

77 Solti, ‘A Few Words from the Conductor’, 405.

78 Leinsdorf, The Composer's Advocate, 149–51.

79 Leinsdorf, 149.

80 See, for example, David Epstein, Shaping Time: Music, the Brain and Performance (New York, 1995); Rink, ‘Playing in Time’, 257–70, and Jon W. Finson, ‘Performing Practice in the Late Nineteenth Century, with Special Reference to the Music of Brahms’, Musical Quarterly, 70, 3 (Summer 1984), 457–75. For a critical approach to proportional tempos in Brahms, see Sherman, ‘Metronome Marks, Timings, and Other Period Evidence Regarding Tempo in Brahms’, in Performing Brahms, ed. Musgrave and Sherman, 99–130.

81 One has to bear in mind the limitations within such approximations; as Sherman suggests, ‘Metronome marks’, 105 (citing a review of Epstein by Bruno Repp in Music Perception, 13, 1 (1996), 592–604), ‘given the five per cent of wiggle room … the probability of a proportional relationship arising between any two randomly chosen tempos is fairly high’.

82 One might also include in this group the ‘rainbow bridge’ music in scene 4, where 72 represents one of four crotchet tempi, or even the crotchet speed of 76 earlier in the scene, Mäßig und sehr ruhig, where Wotan contemplates the ring on his finger after Alberich has delivered his curse.

83 See, for example, Carl Dahlhaus, ‘The Music’, in Wagner Handbook, ed. Ulrich Müller and Peter Wapnewski, trans. John Deathridge (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1992), 304.

84 See William Ashton Ellis (ed. and trans.), Richard Wagner's Prose Works, 8 vols. (London, 1892–9), VI, 183, ‘On the Application of Music to the Drama’.

85 See, for example: Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Formprinzipien in Wagner's “Ring des Nibelungen”’, in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Oper ed. Heinz Becker (Regensburg, 1969), 95–129; Donington, Wagner's Ring and its Symbols; Robert Bailey, ‘The Structure of the Ring and its Evolution’, 19th-Century Music, 1 (July 1977), 48–61; David R. Murray, ‘Major Analytical Approaches to Wagner's Musical Style: A Critique’, Music Review, 38 (1978), 211–22; Deryck Cooke, I Saw the World End: A Study of Wagner's Ring (London, 1979), Chapter 3, ‘Comprehensiveness in Musico-Dramatic Analysis’, 37–73; Patrick McCreless, Wagner's “Siegfried”: Its Drama, History and Music (Ann Arbor, 1982); Anthony Newcomb, ‘The Birth of Music Out of the Spirit of Drama: An Essay in Wagnerian Formal Analysis’, 19th-Century Music, 5, 1 (Summer, 1981), 38–66, and ‘Ritornello Ritornato: A Variety of Wagnerian Refrain Form’, in Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner, ed. Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker (Berkeley, 1989), 202–21; Darcy, ‘Analytical Positions’, in Wagner's ‘Das Rheingold’, Chapter 4, 45–58; and Stephen McClatchie, Analyzing Wagner's Operas: Alfred Lorenz and German Nationalist Ideology (Rochester, 1998).

86 As Newcomb suggests, in ‘The Birth of Music Out of the Spirit of Drama’, 44, in Act III of Siegfried, ‘Wagner carefully indicates juxtapositions and modulations of tempo as a means of projecting a musico-dramatic process. Tempo is again an important communicator of the musico-dramatic shape in the long central dialogue between the two duets of Siegfried III,3, or … in the Wissenswette of Siegfried I,2.’

87 This is ironic, given that, as Anthony Beaumont suggests in Zemlinsky (Cornell, 2000), 167, Bodanzky ‘became notorious for his rapid tempi, particularly in Wagner’.

88 See Philip, Early Recordings and Musical Style, 34–5.

89 See Clive Brown, ‘Historical Performance, Metronome Marks and Tempo in Beethoven's Symphonies’, Early Music, 19, 2 (May 1991), 247–58. One of the most compelling performances to adopt these quick tempi is John Eliot Gardiner's 1994 cycle of Beethoven symphonies (Deutsche Grammophon Archiv Produktion 439 900–2).