Problems of Tempo in Puccini's Arias Author(s): Mei Zhong Source: College Music Symposium, Vol. 40 (2000), pp. 140-150 Published by: College Music Society Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40374404 Accessed: 22-08-2018 17:38 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms College Music Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to College Music Symposium This content downloaded from 129.105.215.146 on Wed, 22 Aug 2018 17:38:20 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Problems of Tempo in Puccini's Arias Mei Zhong problems of tempo in Puccini's soprano arias are surprisingly vexing for per- formers, given that the composer provided many indications in his scores, including many metronome markings, and supervised the preparation of several singers who went on to make early phonograph recordings of his arias. The difficulties arise from the lack of markings in some cases, ambiguous or impractical markings in others (with some evidence that at times Puccini himself was not reliable in this matter), doubts about the authorship of some markings, and wide variations in tempo among recorded perfor- mances.