Performance Practices Related by Primary Sources

comparable to or slightly slower than allegro. John Holden notes in his musical essay of 1770 (Part I, Chapter 5) that vivace is “near the same, but not quite so brisk a movement as Allegro,” and Daniel Gottlob Türk observes in his clavier treatise of 1789 (Chapter 1, Part 5) that “compositions which are marked Vivace are usually played too fast.” Primary sources also reveal performance practices that have been lost or forgotten. As an example, meter signatures during the Classical era conveyed information about tempo and metric accentuation as well as equations of beats into measures. Regarding tempo, meter signatures with large numbers as denominators of the metric fraction, such as 3/8, indicated a relatively fast tempo, while metric fractions with smaller numbers as denominators (e.g., 3/2) indicated a relatively slow tempo. Johann Philipp Kirnberger explains this in Volume 2, Part 1, Chapter 4 of his composition treatise: “Those meters having larger values, such as alla breve, Introduction