ABSTRACT
Franz Schubert was eight years old when Friedrich Guthmann published the first of his 'Expectorations on Modern Music' in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, with the subtitle 'On the all-too-great rapidity of allegro, and on tearing, excessive hurry in general'. Guthmann's comments draw attention to strongly contrasting styles, not only of performance, but also of composition. The fundamental consistency of the principles by which Mozart and Beethoven, in particular, attempted to convey their tempo conventions to performers has been discussed at length in a number of recent studies. Schubert does not appear to have fixed metronome marks for any of his instrumental works, even for the few that were published during his lifetime. Such a possibility is not inconceivable, for many writers of the period made distinctions between the tempo conventions appropriate to different types of music. Schubert's understanding of allegro seems, on the whole, much closer to Beethoven's than to Spohr's or Weber's.
