# Did Beethoven give his pieces the wrong tempo?



## TxllxT (Mar 2, 2011)

Article from Deutsche Welle (27-01-2021)

https://www.dw.com/en/beethoven-symphonies-may-have-the-wrong-tempo/a-56351826


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Interesting article. The conclusions drawn may well be right.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Very interesting idea. And more support from those performers who believe - as I do - that the marked tempos make no sense. There's also the phenomenon of internal time and external time. That is, what you hear in your head may seem perfectly reasonable but in reality its not. Sometimes when I listen to a playback of a concert I conducted I am struck at the difference between what I thought the tempos were and what the recording reveals. The brain is a funny thing. Maybe Beethoven had a different internal clock - being deaf didn't help.


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## Guest002 (Feb 19, 2020)

Good article, but maddenly light on details!

So, I'm looking at my 1847 metronome and the top of the 'metal bit you slide up and down the beater' is reading 96. And the bottom is reading 120.

Is that a wide-enough range of tempi to encompass everything from 'played as we expect' to 'played as Beethoven wrote it'?

Specifically, when I set my metronome 'top' to 108, the bottom reads 138:









Now that's a much higher/wider range of possible tempi than the one cited in the article where a Beethoven isn't sure if it's 108 or 120. Maybe his 'metal bit' was not as wide and all-encompassing as mine -but that's the sort of detail I'd like to have seen mentioned. Here's a photo of Beethoven's metronome, see how when we set _this_ to 120, the other side reads 108, etc etc. Because it certainly doesn't on mine!


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

Karajan would disagree, he says in min 2:08 Beethoven's metronome indications were pretty accurate...


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Axter said:


> Karajan would disagree, he says in min 2:08 Beethoven's metronome indications were pretty accurate...


Yet Karajan's Beethoven is usually slower than Gardiner's.


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

ORigel said:


> Yet Karajan's Beethoven is usually slower than Gardiner's.


True.

Which would mean, Beethoven's tempi are doable, albeit stressful for players.
I saw once an interview with Solti, who said the same thing, that Beethoven's tempi are indeed playable.


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## Xisten267 (Sep 2, 2018)

*Did Beethoven give his pieces the wrong tempo?*

I'm my opinion no, he didn't. His music usually displays a lot of rhythmic vitality that is lost with slow tempi. If one wants to know how great could sound a Beethoven symphony not using slowed down tempi, I think that this one should really take a look at Toscanini's approach (I only say "could" because of the unfortunate sound quality of those recordings).


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

Allerius said:


> *Did Beethoven give his pieces the wrong tempo?*
> 
> I'm my opinion no, he didn't. His music usually displays a lot of rhythmic vitality that is lost with slow tempi. If one wants to know how great could sound a Beethoven symphony not using slowed down tempi, I think that this one should really take a look at Toscanini's approach (I only say "could" because of the unfortunate sound quality of those recordings).


Agree totally. I was thinking of Tuscanini too here. Its a pitty the sound quality isn't good.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

OT: No, and that opinion has been backed up by many, many music historians and writers over the years. Whether conductors choose to follow them is another matter.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

Genuine question, but does anyone know of any recorded performance of the Hammerklavier sonata in which Beethoven's metronome indications are followed precisely from start to finish? I think maybe even Schnabel was too slow by that standard.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

The right tempo depends on the sound of the concert hall, so absolut metronome indications are inappropriate anyway.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

It's too bad Beethoven didn't write a Sonata for Metronome. It likely would have taught us a lot.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

consuono said:


> Genuine question, but does anyone know of any recorded performance of the Hammerklavier sonata in which Beethoven's metronome indications are followed precisely from start to finish? I think maybe even Schnabel was too slow by that standard.


Here's the thing-hardly anyone stays at a consistent tempo when performing music. I do believe Schnabel and Serkin come closest if you give them a bit of leeway in terms of expression and rubato.

Yes, the metronome markings by Beethoven are rather insanely quickly. But we also know that people at the time felt the same way, considering that the work was perceived as impossible for quite some time until Liszt performed it. And it is the great virtuoso Hans von Bülow (also Liszt's son-in-law) who proclaimed that anybody who played the Hammerklavier at the original tempo would produce a "confusing and blurred effect". He would go on to recommend a tempo of 112 and said that the original tempo was due to the shallow action of early fortepianos.

Von Bülow was born in 1830 and yet his views and explanation for Beethoven's markings are consistent with how we feel about them today, almost two hundred years later. He was the son in law of Liszt and thus had a direct pipeline to Czerny and Beethoven.

So no, the way people used the metronome did not arbitrarily flip during the 19th century.

Just saying this to get Wim Winter's spectacularly stupid theories out of the way.


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## chu42 (Aug 14, 2018)

hammeredklavier said:


>


Wim claims that a performance of Don Giovanni would have lasted longer than Tristan; despite the fact that we have handbills from the 18th century advertising a 2-3 hour performance.


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## consuono (Mar 27, 2020)

chu42 said:


> Wim claims that a performance of Don Giovanni would have lasted longer than Tristan; despite the fact that we have handbills from the 18th century advertising a 2-3 hour performance.


The hour was longer then, maybe. :lol:


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