Conducting the Wind Orchestra: Meaning, Gesture, and Expressive P ...

He cites a motive from Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, first appearing in bars 82–83, to illustrate his point: “Where a modification of the tempo was necessary to get expressive phrasing, it happened that in order to make this modification quite clear to his hearers, he exaggerated it; indeed, he fell into a quite new tempo that was a negation of the main one”.¹⁹ Weingartner feels that tempo modifications “should be done in such a way as not to dismember the organic character of the whole thing”.

Weingartner believes that art is best served by a balance between intellect and feeling. This balance is maintained through careful governance of the details of a given work. He writes, “In an art-work, indeed, no one part is of less significant than another, and each detail has its full raison d’être, but only in so far as it is subordinated to a homogeneous conception of the essential nature of the whole work—a continuous conception that dominates all details”.²⁰ Although Weingartner appears more objective in his views than Wagner, he nevertheless makes decisions with regard to the score, which suggest a similar kind of subjectivity. This is particularly evident in his performances of Beethoven symphonies—in which he made alterations to the scores based on his understanding of the composer’s intentions. In his essay On the Performance of Beethoven’s Symphonies, Weingartner writes, “Indeed, it must be confessed that many passages awaken a feeling of confusion rather than of pleasure. And yet we should be renouncing at once all ideas of a true reproduction if we passed these problems by, and took refuge behind the mere correctness of our reading”.²¹ He would argue that his alterations serve his conception of the nature of the work. Whilst for him this may be true, to assume that the composer would have written certain instrumental parts differently—had particular notes been available—is, nevertheless, pure conjecture.