Piano Forum

Piano Street Magazine:
Watch the Chopin Competition 2025 with us!

Great news for everyone who loves Chopin’s music: Piano Street’s unique Chopin Competition tool is now complete. With all 1,870 recorded performances from the Preliminary Round to the Final, you can conveniently sort, explore, and watch both videos and piano scores at your fingertips. Read more

Pages: [1] Go Down

Topic: Schubert Marche Militaire Tempo (Read 1699 times)

transitional

PS Silver Member
Sr. Member
Posts: 953

Schubert Marche Militaire Tempo

on: January 06, 2024, 03:11:18 PM

I am writing a piano arrangement for Marche Militaire No. 1 (D 733) but am confused about the tempo. I tried to play it at Allegro vivace and it seemed unreasonably fast, and when I listen to recordings of the 4 hands version. Right now I set the bpm to 120 and at 100 for the trio, which works to my ears. But I'm still confused about the tempo marking set. I also don't see a bpm in any of the IMSLP copies but the Liszt transcription has a bpm of 108, suggesting Schubert may have indicated a slower tempo. Why, then, would it be marked Allegro vivace?

Logged

lelle

PS Gold Member
Sr. Member
Posts: 2678

Re: Schubert Marche Militaire Tempo

Reply #1 on: January 06, 2024, 11:11:52 PM

Tempo marks having certain BPM:s associated with them is not a hard rule. Ultimately, these words are just descriptions of character. Allegro vivace = fast and lively. How fast "fast" is depends on what suits the music.

Same thing with Presto - different Presto's have different BPM:s. It just tells you it's supposed to be very fast.