ABSTRACT
The author would simply emphasize that tempo plays a particularly important role in forming large-scale structural relationships in Shostakovich's symphonies and that warping tempi to a significant degree alters more than local stylization. There are a few rare occasions in the symphonies where Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich does not supply specific metronome markings. In these instances, it is possible to use the principle of proportional distribution to infer a possible tempo. However, such an approach rarely occurs in performance, and, interestingly, if such an approach were adopted then the symphony would have no long-range symmetries or golden sections. As David Fanning has pointed out in his own discussion of tempi in Shostakovich's music, strict adherence to the score would imply not only an 'arrogance of presuming to know and to be able to reproduce the composer's 'way', but also the assumption that there is any such thing in the first place'.
