t the slightest confusion. All that is requisite
is to make them come in properly.

A gross fault that I have seen committed, consists in enlarging the time
of a piece in common-time, when the author has introduced into it
triplets of minims:--

[Illustration]

In such a case, the third minim adds nothing to the duration of the bar,
as some conductors seem to imagine. They may, if they please, and if the
movement be slow or moderate, make these passages by beating the bar with
three beats, but the duration of the whole bar should remain precisely
the same. In a case where these triplets occur in a very quick bar in
common-time (allegro-assai), the three gestures then cause confusion,
and it is absolutely necessary to make only two,--one beat upon the first
minim, and one upon the third. These gestures, owing to the quickness of
the movement, differ little to the eye, from the two of the bar with two
equal beats, and do not affect the movement of those parts of the
orchestra which contain no triplets.

[Illustration]

We will now speak of the conductor's method of beating in recitatives.
Here, as the singer or the instrumentalist is reciting, and no longer
subject to the regular division of the bar, it is requisite, while
following him attentively, to make the orchestra strike, simultaneously
and with precision, the chords or instrumental passages with which the
recitative is intermingled; and to make the harmony change at the proper
instant, when the recitative is accompanied either by holding-notes or
by a tremolo in several parts, of which the least apparent, occasionally,
is that which the conductor must most regard, since upon its motion
depends the change of chord:--

[Illustration]

In this example, the conductor, while following the reciting part, not
kept time to, has especially to attend to the viola part, and to make it
move, at the proper moment, from the F to the E, at the commencement of
the second bar; because otherwise, as this part is executed by several
instrumentalists playing in unison, some of them would hold the F longer
than the rest, and a transient discord would be produced.

Many conductors have the habit, when directing the orchestra in
recitatives, of paying no heed to the written division of the bar, and
of marking an up beat before that whereon a brief orchestral chord
occurs, even when this chord comes on an unaccented part of the bar:--

[Illustration]

In a passage such as th