Page:Essentials in Conducting.djvu/60

48 conductor substitutes his own judgment for that of the composer, assuming that the latter either made a mistake in indicating the tempo, or else that he had not tried the composition at the tempo preferred by the conductor, and therefore did not realize how much more effective it would be that way.

In the main, there are five methods upon which the conductor depends for determining the correct tempo of a composition. These are:

Of these, the fifth, viz., individual judgment is most important, and is the court of final resort in the case of the mature musician; but the amateur who has had but little experience and who is therefore without any well developed musical taste must depend largely upon his metronome, upon his knowledge of Italian tempo terms, and upon tradition. A brief discussion of these matters will accordingly be in order at this time.

The metronome is a sort of clock with inverted pendulum, the ticks or clicks of which can be regulated as to rate of speed by means of a sliding weight. When this weight is set at the point marked 64, for example, the metronome