INTERMEZZO, in't5r-med'zi. (It., interlude). In larger instrumental works, a short movement in slow tempo inserted between two main move - ments. It generally takes the place of the slow movement if the composer does not wish to write a full andante or adagio, as in Beethoven's Sonata op. 53. In Schumann's Concerto in A minor the intermezzo is sufficiently extended to be considered the legitimate slow movement of the work. Sometimes an entirely separate and in dependent composition bears the title intermezzo. In the old suite any extra movements added to the four obligatory ones (allemande. courante, larabande, gigue), and always inserted between the third and fourth are called intermezzi. The intermezzos originally were short musical inter ludes or entr'actes which it was customary in Italy to perform between the acts of a tragedy. When the opera. series begin to flourish in the seventeenth century. intermezzos treating some
mythological subject were performed between the acts. Originally the different intermezzos had no connection one with the other. But gradu ally the intermezzo became a secondary plot. For the sake of variety it always treated a comic subject, so that a performance of an opera stria consist& alternately of a serious act of the opera itselt and a comic act of the in termezzo. The next step was the emancipation of the intermezzo into a separate art form. the opera buffo. Its place in the opera stria was then taken by the ballet (q.v.). The intermezzos in the spoken drama of to-day are purely instrumental. Two famous examples of intermezzos written for dramas are the music to Goethe's Egmont by Beethoven, and the music to Shakespeare's Midsummer Yight's Dream by INIendelssohn.