Unusual movement indications.

[JimL]

Mozart was one of music's original jokesters.  He HATED the flute, or so he said.  I find it entirely likely that he was ribbing Cambini, just as he put all those joking asides to Leutgeb into the finales of his horn concertos.

[fyrexia]

Here are a few for the game.
Sorabji Desir Eperdu - Moderament Lent - Comme un Tormente d'une desir insatiable
Shchedrin - Sonata No.2 Mov 3 - Presto Possibile (try to play it like a midi ?)
Shenshin - Piano Sonata Op.10 - Con Slancio - Tragicamente
Pouishnoff - Musical Box - Automaticamente (i am not sure how)
Feinberg - Sonata No.2 - Allegro Volando y Cantabile (flying and singing at the same time is not so easy)

[eschiss1]

(as to Mozart, I think the guess that he hated being commissioned at a time when he was courting may have been closer to the mark - but it is no more than a guess, for all of that.)
Nielsen's probably already been mentioned - Sorabji (I do not try to deprecate his music, of which I am a great fan, in saying this) I consider partially, partially, a "descendant" of Scriabin when it comes to movement headings- but I may be mistaken there.
Trying to remember whose work had the paradoxical "Allegretto moderato" (as in erm- ok- in which direction?.. as discussed on newsgroups back when I was in college) - not Rossini's Stabat Mater, the closest it seems to come that I can tell ( on a skim, I may have missed it just now) is Andantino moderato at the opening. Though a search reveals an Allegretto moderato (for string trio, in D, ca.1864, first published 1967) by Tchaikovsky and similarly titled works by others. Still seems to raise the same question.

[britishcomposer]

Another Rued Langgaard? Here is his 3rd String Quartet of 1924:
1. Poco allegro rapinoso [robbing]
2. Presto scherzoso artifizioso [artificial or affected?]
3. Tranquillo – Scherzoso schernevole [mocking] – Tranquillo – Mosso frenetico [frantic] - Maestoso

[Aramiarz]

Ernesto Toch used curious tempo indications in his symphonies, for example, the first movement of the second symphony is "allegro fanatico".

[jdperdrix]

Alban Berg's final movements of his "Lyrische Suite" for string quartet are marked "Presto Delirando" and "Largo Desolato".
More recent, Györgi Ligeti's second string quartet has one movement marked "Come un meccanismo di precisione".

[eschiss1]

(I think since posting about the Pappalardo example with the "Dispetto" etc. I've encountered a few cases like that- "that" meaning actually here,

composers using their native language in a more fluent fashion (e.g. Italian-speakers sometimes using more Italian vocabulary (etc.) than other composers who mostly restrict themselves to the "basic" Italian lingua franca (italia? ... since Lingua franca means "Frankish language"...) Will try to fill in with something more specific soon.)

[Aramiarz]

Toch in the four piece inspired in Rilke's poems, usted the indication: Allegro incalzato

Toch in his first etage wrote late Romantic, his first violin & piano sonate was named Fifth Brahms's symphony! The piece that I indicated above is of 1932, it is very interesting And turbulent, until I say that is very intense And romantic!

[Gauk]

No-one has mentioned Charles Ives's Violin Sonata (I can't remember which of them, possibly the third), which has the indication for the 2nd movement "Andante con slugarocko".

[jdperdrix]

Third movement of Ives's fourth violin sonata. Actual indication is "Allegro (con slugarocko)".

[eschiss1]

Re the Langgaard, schernevole I hadn't seen, but frenetico is not that unusual (though Worldcat.org doesn't list a musical score with "Frenetico" somewhere attached earlier-published than Ernest Bloch's first string quartet, a little before the Langgaard work.) (BTW the Toch is (the finale of) his Musik für Orchester, Op.60 (1932) - see brief checklist of Toch's compositions from this later edition of his "The Shaping Forces of Music".)

BTW Rapinoso occurs also as the indication for the third of Dallapiccola's "Cinque canti : per baritone e alcuni strumenti" (pub.1957).

[Gauk]

Third movement of Ives's fourth violin sonata. Actual indication is "Allegro (con slugarocko)".

Problems of citing from memory!

[Jonathan]

Liszt used Allegro intrepido in his Carrousel de Madame P-N (S214a)

[chill319]

Ludolf Nielsen's third symphony includes a movement marked Allegretto agevole.