# Beethoven's "Broken" Metronome



## ldiat (Jan 27, 2016)

found this on Google +. its 10 min long and less then 500 views. just sharing


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

Well, that'll take some getting used to.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

So, if he's right and the Hammerklavier should really be played that slowly, then why does so much of Beethoven's other music sound just fine when played with our usual way of counting the beats?


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## chesapeake bay (Aug 3, 2015)

He is wrong, that section is also marked "Allegro", what he plays is not Allegro. I've mentioned this before, but you can listen to Beveridge Webster play this at the 138 tempo marking here: 



 Also if you read Charles Rosin's "The Classical Style" there is mention of a woman who was working on the Hammerklavier and despaired of practicing for 6 months and still not being able to play the opening bars, I think any pianist could play it at the speed the video shows.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I've watched a few of his videos and it's rubbish. There's no way Beethoven played that slow. According to him then, his symphonies would make Celi's accounts sound like Chailly. One thing he is right on though is that there was bugger all wrong with Beethoven's metronome. They were very accurate and could take some serious punishment.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Beethoven's tempo marking have always seemed too fast to me. The music needs more time to breathe and for the ear to assimilate. We do know though that performances of music were faster in the 19th than now. We seemed to slow down quite a bit for the last 100-150 years. 

There's something else at work, too, and that's "composer time". What sounds good in your head often seems rushed when you actually hear it. Conductors experience it too; listening to a recording you made you find yourself saying "it didn't seem that fast". Lorin Maazel wrote about this. Maybe that's the problem with Beethoven's markings.

There's a great science fiction book from the 1950's, The Black Cloud, by Fred Hoyle that has a scene with the Hammerklavier. The alien entity hears it and insists is must go faster, and faster - only then does it make sense. Of course the scientists are amused that this alien somehow understood this while not realizing that no human could possibly play it, correctly, at 138.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Some of Beethoven's metronome markings do seem excessive, but taking all his tempi at half the apparent speed would make "allegro" disappear as a meaningful term (as here in the "Hammerklavier") and turn "adagio molto" into a call for virtual stasis. However, Wim may be right that there were two ways of reading metronome markings, and that the "two-beat" approach would apply in some cases, with musicians of the time assumed to be able to make the appropriate choice. I can concede this as a possibility based on the fact that it sometimes seems to work in practice. Schumann's _Kinderszenen _may be such a case:






Even here, though, I'm doubtful. After watching this I went to the piano and tried playing "Traumerei" at the "too fast" tempo Schumann indicates, and I found that with well-articulated phrasing and a flexible rubato it sounded quite fine, though certainly not what we've become accustomed to.

I take it as a general rule that in Romantic music from about mid-century on, the expressive use of rubato and flexibility in tempo is, more than any other factor, the key to interpretation. Evidence for this can be found in the words of Schumann himself, in Wagner's thoughts on conducting, in reports of Mahler's conducting style, and in the recorded performances of numerous artists in the early days of recording. The basic tempo of a piece, as indicated by the metronome, is a point of departure, not a straight jacket, and is not expected to be upheld during every moment of a piece or movement.

Brahms wanted nothing to do with the metronome and didn't mark his scores, and Wagner, after putting metronome marks in his operas, found that he couldn't adhere to them in performance and removed them. Beethoven seemed infatuated with the device, but he had the frequent experience of performers not understanding his works and choosing inappropriate tempi, and so must have felt a strong need to use clear markings to prevent this from happening. My guess is that he didn't even perform his own works at exactly the same tempi every time.


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Some of Beethoven's metronome markings do seem excessive, but taking all his tempi at half the apparent speed would make "allegro" disappear as a meaningful term.


But _Allegro_ does not necessarily mean fast, it means 'cheerful' and is interpreted as indicating a 'brisk' tempo more like the French indication 'Vif'. I have the feeling that over time, and particularly during the 19th century as mbhaub stated, _Allegro_ has morphed into something closer to presto.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I couldn't understand the speaker in the video of the OP. I found this afterwards.

http://artsnash.com/classicalmusic/beethovens-metronome-busted/

Judging by the total length of the sonata, I suspect his marking is correct. Also as it was considered to be unplayable until Liszt.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

eugeneonagain said:


> But _Allegro_ does not necessarily mean fast, it means 'cheerful' and is interpreted as indicating a 'brisk' tempo more like the French indication 'Vif'. I have the feeling that over time, and particularly during the 19th century as mbhaub stated, _Allegro_ has morphed into something closer to presto.


When Beethoven says "allegro," he certainly means fast. And cheerful is only coincidental if it's there at all (see Symphonies 5 and 9, for instance!)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

eugeneonagain said:


> But _Allegro_ does not necessarily mean fast, it means 'cheerful' and is interpreted as indicating a 'brisk' tempo more like the French indication 'Vif'. I have the feeling that over time, and particularly during the 19th century as mbhaub stated, _Allegro_ has morphed into something closer to presto.


That may be true for Haydn and Mozart (or it may not), but in Beethoven "allegro" has become pretty generic for "fast," whatever its etymology. His music is full of allegros, with modifiers such as "assai," "molto," "moderato," "ma non troppo," etc., and the emotional character of the music would seem to be irrelevant. The opening movements of the "Eroica," the 5th and the 9th symphonies, the opening and closing movements of the "Appassionata" sonata, and numerous other works passionate, heroic and even tragic, can hardly be called "brisk" or "cheerful." Beethoven wrote prestos and prestissimos when he wanted something even faster.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

With regard to tempi, some think that Beethoven purposefully 'set the bar high' to test performers or to ensure that his works weren't played too slowly (a particular dislike of his) whilst others just believe what he heard in his head may have been playable but with reverberant acoustics in concert halls and less skilled players, not so. Norrington, Chailly and Co have all shown that the symphonies can all be played to metronome markings and made to sound 'right' (not to some ears though). I listened to a really good radio podcast about what humans feel is a 'comfortable' metronome rate. Some of it is here at WNYC Radio lab. There's a few podcasts about it. Very interesting.

https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/271345-speedthoven


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Oh how boring life would be if there was consensus about the right tempo of Beethoven's music and every performance would be played at that exact speed........THE HORROR!!!!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Razumovskymas said:


> Oh how boring life would be if there was consensus about the right tempo of Beethoven's music and every performance would be played at that exact speed........THE HORROR!!!!


We would miss out on some of the greatest performances. The performer must serve the composer's conception as he understands it, but his understanding must be his own. If he feels the music at a tempo faster or slower than the metronome marking, the metronome must yield.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Does anyone happen to know at what tempo Art Tatum played the _Hammerklavier_?


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

It's a funny thing: the metronome was invented precisely so that there would no longer be any ambiguity about tempi. 

Me, I suspect it might be further evidence of Beethoven's mathematical illiteracy - perhaps he just didn't know how to work out what a metronome marking meant in practice.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

brianvds said:


> Me, I suspect it might be further evidence of Beethoven's mathematical illiteracy - perhaps he just didn't know how to work out what a metronome marking meant in practice.


Ludwig's "mathematical illiteracy" deserted him when he was talking turkey with his publishers. Then, he became quite the canny negotiator. His contract for his very first opus number, the three trios, was a masterpiece of complexity and worked much to his advantage. Cooper has the details in his biography.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

mbhaub said:


> There's something else at work, too, and that's *"composer time". What sounds good in your head often seems rushed when you actually hear it.* Conductors experience it too; listening to a recording you made you find yourself saying "it didn't seem that fast". Lorin Maazel wrote about this. Maybe that's the problem with Beethoven's markings.


Yes. Modern composers are well-aware of and likely to compensate for this phenomenon. Early users of metronomes were not.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

mbhaub said:


> Beethoven's tempo marking have always seemed too fast to me. The music needs more time to breathe and for the ear to assimilate. We do know though that performances of music were faster in the 19th than now. We seemed to slow down quite a bit for the last 100-150 years.
> 
> There's something else at work, too, and that's "composer time". What sounds good in your head often seems rushed when you actually hear it. Conductors experience it too; listening to a recording you made you find yourself saying "it didn't seem that fast". Lorin Maazel wrote about this. Maybe that's the problem with Beethoven's markings.


Even Roger Norrington, whose recordings document an apparent desire to prove that you can never get a piece over with soon enough, couldn't quite reach Beethoven's metronome markings in the 9th. But rather than take that as a clue to the phenomenon you call "composer time," which I agree is a real thing, he proceeded to speed up even later 19th-century works and make some truly abominable recordings of Wagner and Tchaikovsky. The irony is that Wagner himself discovered that music naturally plays faster in the mind than in performance when he tried conducting his works to his own metronome markings, found it impossible, had to go back and remove them from his scores, and renounced his use of the device. Thus Norrington recorded the music at tempos he might have imagined the composer would have specified had he not given up using the metronome to specify them! Norrington was right to realize that 20th-century performance practice tended toward slower tempos, but his recordings of Beethoven and others offer a perfect example of how legitimate insight becomes "HIP" dogma that overrides natural musical intuition.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I don't have any beef with Norrington's tempi in Beethoven or his lack of rubato. These are arguments that we'll never have the answer to and as there is historical evidence to back his claims his interpretations have validity. Plus, they sound right. Listen to his 2nd go at the LvB cycle. Almost devoid of rubato and with very brisk speeds he still makes it sound right (although I have a few issues with the 9th). It's a very impressive set! As you rightly point out, though, Woodduck, some of his accounts (Mahler especially for me) are misinformed often by his questionable cherry-picking of music and especially Mahler's history. In Beethoven, whether performances are fast or slow, rubatoless or not I don't care as long as the performance can convince me that it sounds right played that way. I can't comment on Norrington's Wagner or Tchaikovsky as yet to hear either.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Merl said:


> I don't have any beef with Norrington's tempi in Beethoven or his lack of rubato. These are arguments that we'll never have the answer to and as there is historical evidence to back his claims his interpretations have validity. Plus, they sound right. Listen to his 2nd go at the LvB cycle. Almost devoid of rubato and with very brisk speeds he still makes it sound right (although I have a few issues with the 9th). It's a very impressive set! As you rightly point out, though, Woodduck, some of his accounts (Mahler especially for me) are misinformed often by his questionable cherry-picking of music and especially Mahler's history. In Beethoven, whether performances are fast or slow, rubatoless or not I don't care as long as the performance can convince me that it sounds right played that way. *I can't comment on Norrington's Wagner or Tchaikovsky as yet to hear either.*


If you've ever dreamed of waltzing to the prelude to _Tristan und Isolde,_ here's your chance:






Hilarious bit of irony: the first concert performance of this prelude was given by Johann Strauss and his orchestra.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Ludwig's "mathematical illiteracy" deserted him when he was talking turkey with his publishers. Then, he became quite the canny negotiator. His contract for his very first opus number, the three trios, was a masterpiece of complexity and worked much to his advantage. Cooper has the details in his biography.


True that! 
He was an expert at creative bookkeeping, so perhaps he did exaggerate his difficulties with arithmetic a bit. That way they didn't see him coming.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

brianvds said:


> He was an expert at creative bookkeeping, so perhaps he did exaggerate his difficulties with arithmetic a bit. That way they didn't see him coming.


"Are the bigger cards better? And how about the cards with letters instead of numbers? By the way, I'll bet $4,000..." :lol:


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## Star (May 27, 2017)

No question to me that the metronome marking is too fast for the Hammerklavier and at least some of the other works too. Cha illy gas shown they can be played at that speed but I find them sounding rushed. But we mustn't forget that Chailly and Norfington et al has players who way outstrip Beethoven's. I believe the orchestra for the ninth was at least partly amateur, am I right? So the musician in Beethoven would know they couldn't play at sound of the speeds indicated. The problem is if you take that solution for the Hammerklavier you geta whole load of Beethoven's music sounding far too slow. Why not the solution that he didn't know how to work it properly - I have known people with PhDs who can't work out practical things - and stick to tempi that sound right - fast and not rushed


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> If you've ever dreamed of waltzing to the prelude to _Tristan und Isolde,_ here's your chance:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah that's not great. At least he's trying summat different. It may be wrong but it's at least interesting. His Mahler may be similarly silly but at least his account of the first is still better than several of the boring or wrong versions I have (eg Kegel).


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Beethoven should have smashed that damn metronome for all the uncertainty its questionable accuracy has caused ever since—probably the exact opposite of what he intended. At least with a standard marking, such as Allegro or whatever, a certain flexibility of tempo is implied rather than placing the performer in a straightjacket of an unrelentingly rigid and inflexible tempo overall. Maybe he thought he was being modern by using it rather than questioning its use. There’s still something rotten in Denmark with regard to the pressure of following those exact metronome markings like a fearful slave afraid of doing something wrong.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Now here's our half-speed demon playing for us a Beethoven's 5th that will allow even the most sluggish mind to register and contemplate at its leisure every detail:


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Woodduck said:


> Now here's our half-speed demon playing for us a Beethoven's 5th that will allow even the most sluggish mind to register and contemplate at its leisure every detail:


'.Half-speed demon'. Hahaha. Sometimes when you slow a piece down it sounds OK but that just sounds terrible. Those pregnant pauses between notes are excruciating. I was actually wishing for Cobra to conduct the rest just to speed it up (a bit). For his next innovation perhaps he'll find something to support the theory that Mahler's 2nd should be played on comb and paper.


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## SalieriIsInnocent (Feb 28, 2008)

Consider myself the odd man out on this, but I quite like the slowed down approach. Kind of the opposite direction you hear from folks like Gardiner, who conduct as if they need to go feed the parking meter. That being said, it's still more lively than the ghastly Cobra performance. 

I like what Mr. Winters is trying to achieve. At the end of the day, I doubt even Beethoven had a consistent idea of how fast or slow the piece was to be played. I don't think it was so extreme on either end of the tempi spectrum. 

I think conductors tend to rush the piece a bit too much, especially in HIP recordings. I don't quite follow the argument that 19th century musicians were these speed-demon performers. I don't doubt their abilities as musicians, but an entire orchestra on those instruments of the era playing at that speed and ferocity, just sounds like the recipe for disaster. 

It's good to ask these questions and try them out. I'm sure for any musical piece, most in this forum have that one recording that has stayed firmly on the pedestal of perfection. More often than not, it's the recording that made you fall in love with it. The first time I heard Beethoven was through a Musical Heritage Society box set by the later Walter Weller. I still go back to those recordings.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Woodduck said:


> Now here's our half-speed demon playing for us a Beethoven's 5th that will allow even the most sluggish mind to register and contemplate at its leisure every detail:


 That's some tempo. It sounds like Fate vacationing in the Caribbean and leisurely sipping a mai tai before getting back to bedeviling Beethoven, or the tortoise instead of the hare.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

I suspect fate wasn't knocking at the door cos it couldn't be bothered.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

I find Winter's slow 5th interesting. I've long felt that most (but not all) conductors rush the end of the third movement (particularly the period conductors), glossing over the content of the music, by losing the intensity and inherent struggle & slow build within the music to rise back up (like a boxer who's been knocked out and now must get back up), following after (or emerging out of) the long "death note" where the music completely flatlines. (Most conductors miss the 'death note' too, by either making it too brief or drowning it out with the drums.) So, I wonder if Winter is onto something here? Since his half-speed tempo would avoid that trap.

My mind also turns to Franz Liszt: if Liszt played his music much more softly and slowly than the big virtuosos of the 20th century, according to pianist Emil von Sauer, a Liszt student, then could Liszt's (uniformly?) 'slow' approach to music and tempi have come from Czerny? And if from Czerny, then could it not have come from Beethoven?

On the other hand, there is Andras Schiff's interesting demonstration lecture on the Hammerclavier, where he tackles the problem posed by Beethoven's fast metronome markings. Schiff says that he tried Beethoven's actual metronome, and found that it wasn't broken. "I swear to God that it works", he says. Indeed, Schiff attempts to convince us (demonstrating on the piano) that not only did Beethoven know what he was asking for, but that what he wanted was musically a lot more interesting than the way most pianists have mistakenly played this sonata:






And then there was Wilhelm Kempff, who said that Beethoven was far too deaf to possibly know what he was asking for.


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## SalieriIsInnocent (Feb 28, 2008)

People are attacking Winters as some incompetent blowhard. He's not pretending to be the sole torch bearer of tempo law. He's daring to ask questions and tackling each piece from a different perspective. I quite enjoy watching his various talks and uploads. Grow up people, he's not melting your Klemperer albums or erasing Karajan from historical record. We have thousands of Beethoven sets at any speed you could ask for. 

I'd rather hear Beethoven take his time, than Beethoven sprinting, at least for his symphonies. Go nuts with his chamber and solo works.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Josquin13 said:


> ...On the other hand, there is Andras Schiff's interesting demonstration lecture on the Hammerclavier, where he tackles the problem posed by Beethoven's fast metronome markings. Schiff says that he tried Beethoven's actual metronome, and found that it wasn't broken. "I swear to God that it works", he says.


I wondered about this when I first heard that lecture. Beethoven's metronome still exists, but it is missing the weight that goes on the swinging arm. Schiff may well have determined that the device "works," but I don't know how he could tell anything about its calibration.


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## Biffo (Mar 7, 2016)

As I understand it Beethoven determined his metronome markings with his nephew Carl. The conversation books suggest they had problems with the metronome, mainly deciding how it worked. Beethoven played the works on the piano, which he couldn't hear, and Carl tried to match it to the metronome.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Biffo said:


> As I understand it Beethoven determined his metronome markings with his nephew Carl. The conversation books suggest they had problems with the metronome, mainly deciding how it worked. Beethoven played the works on the piano, which he couldn't hear, and Carl tried to match it to the metronome.


Oh, well then. With a precision methodology like that what could possibly go wrong?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I can’t get too excited about all this because for the most part Beethoven’s metronome markings work just fine. His symphonies for example are now routinely played with the tempi he indicated, and nobody complains any more.

Beethoven was a master musician, both as composer and as performer. To claim that in the case of one work he didn’t understand how to use his metronome, or that he failed to use it properly for whatever reason, seems to me pretty unrealistic.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Biffo said:


> As I understand it Beethoven determined his metronome markings with his nephew Carl. The conversation books suggest they had problems with the metronome, mainly deciding how it worked. Beethoven played the works on the piano, which he couldn't hear, and Carl tried to match it to the metronome.


 Actually, I think it was spelled Karl, and "Beethoven, his uncle, saw him as the Beethoven to carry the illustrious musical name forward. Even before Beethoven's brother Carl's death, Beethoven saw himself as guardian of his nephew, determined to rescue him from the clutches of his (as he saw it) immoral mother... The protracted legal action that Beethoven waged against his sister-in-law is testament to his overriding determination to be in sole control of Karl's destiny."

But it seems doubtful that Karl ever saw himself as having his uncle's interest or his ability as a musician or composer. Nevertheless, it appears that Beethoven very much thought and believed it and perhaps that's why he tried so hard, out of exasperation, to get Karl out of the clutches of his mother. To imagine the two of them trying to figure out the metronome when Karl might not have been interested at all seems rather amusing.


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

KenOC writes, "I wondered about this when I first heard that lecture. Beethoven's metronome still exists, but it is missing the weight that goes on the swinging arm. Schiff may well have determined that the device "works," but I don't know how he could tell anything about its calibration."

Without the weight, could it have still made a calibrated sound, like a clock? I used to be able to hear when my pianist neighbor in NYC was practicing with her metronome, from the hallway outside her apartment, as the ticking sound was that loud, over her Steinway grand. So, I wonder, could Beethoven's metronome have made a similar sound independent of the weight?



Biffo said:


> As I understand it Beethoven determined his metronome markings with his nephew Carl. The conversation books suggest they had problems with the metronome, mainly deciding how it worked. Beethoven played the works on the piano, which he couldn't hear, and Carl tried to match it to the metronome.


That's news to me. I thought Beethoven worked out the metronome markings with his student Czerny. It's hard to imagine that he simply handed over Karl's markings to Czerny, without testing or confirming these markings with Czerny's additional help? That would surprise me. As I didn't know he had so much confidence in Karl's musical abilities, especially when it came to such important matters as how his 9 Symphonies and Hammerclavier Sonata would be performed for posterity.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Sooner or later someone will record a Beethoven symphony cycle playing everything at half-speed. Meanwhile, whet your appetite with Symphony #9, led by the awesomely named Maximianno Cobra. He subscribes to the "double-beat" theory; he adheres rigidly to Beethoven's metronome markings and, sure enough, the hour-long symphony takes two hours.






The scherzo begins at 27:30, the adagio at 51:05, and the finale at 1:12:30.

This performance is the subject of a thread begun on 1/8/08:

Beethoven 9 Disaster - Maximianno Cobra

Post #79, I think, provides an interesting and pretty decisive refutation of Wim's "double-beat" theory.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Josquin13 said:


> Without the weight, could it have still made a calibrated sound, like a clock? … So, I wonder, could Beethoven's metronome have made a similar sound independent of the weight?


It probably wouldn't work at all, but if the arm _did _swing back and forth the metronome would make its sound but at a very fast and non-adjustable rate. Without its sliding weight, which sets the tempo, a mechanical metronome is quite useless.

BTW from the Beethoven-Haus Bonn archives:

"Beethoven was a strong advocate of the metronome. In 1818 he and Antonio Salieri argued for it in an advertisement in the musical paper _Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung_. He added metronome marks to some of his works. Today, however, these are often regarded as too fast.

"Beethoven works with metronome marks:
All nine symphonies (op. 21, 36, 55, 60, 67, 68, 92, 93, 125); 
The first eleven string quartets (op. 18, 59, 74, 95); 
Septet op. 20; 
Sonata for piano forte op. 106;
Op. 112, 121b and 137 as well as WoO 148 and 149;
Planned (but not completed) were metronome marks for op. 123, 127 and 85."


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## Josquin13 (Nov 7, 2017)

But Schiff 'swore to God' that it works, implying that he had actually used it. What is the world coming to, when we can't trust famous Hungarian pianists to tell us the truth? 

Anyway, it's an interesting lecture, regardless of Schiff's apparent dissembling.

Thanks, Ken.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Another theory I’ve seen is that Beethoven dictated the Hammerklavier’s metronome markings to nephew Karl, who wrote them down. But (the theory goes) in this case Karl assigned Beethoven’s number to the wrong note value. For example, Beethoven may have said 132 quarter-notes per minute, and Karl might have written down 132 half-notes per minute, doubling the speed Beethoven wanted.

Aside from the fact that this is pure speculation, there are two possible objections: First, would Beethoven never have noticed the error? He was usually quite careful about such things. Second, Karl himself was a musically literate pianist and probably would have noticed his mistake if it led to a ridiculously fast tempo.

Anyway, the jury’s still out.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Many artists don't seem to care too much what the metronome markings were. I have at least 18 recordings of the Hammerklavier. Timing of the Adagio is all over the map with 18-20' being the most common. However Serkin comes in at a little over 16' and John Lill may, at the other end, hold the record at 24'41"!


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Maybe Beethoven was suffering from Click Clack and maybe the rhythm of the score is totally irrelevant to what he intended


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

Fwiw, just came across a Hammerklavier Adagio with Eschenbach now holding the record at 25'17".

Sorry to go off-topic, but in checking out Hammerklaviers, I came across something you don't run across every day: a pairing of the Hammerklavier #29 and #32 for the humongous price of $2.98 on Amazon. It's a BBC recording by Edith Vogel from 1977.


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## SalieriIsInnocent (Feb 28, 2008)

^I have that CD in my collection somewhere. Wonder if it still plays. It's one of the unfortunate CDs that had to endure my CD wallet years, so it's probably in dire need of a resurfacing.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

^^^ I have it too, and consider Edith Vogel's performances quite competitive.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Surely the solution to any tempo is that it sounds right. I remember Colin Davis saying Stravinsky told him that one of his speeds was too fast for a certain work and Davis said it was at Stravinsky's own metronome marking. Stravinsky said, "The metronome mark is just the beginning not the end of interpretation."


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I seem to remember (or half-remember) Beecham being told by the composer that Beetham's tempi were too fast. Beecham responded, "A pity, sir, that you do not know this piece better."


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

KenOC said:


> I seem to remember (or half-remember) Beecham being told by the composer that Beetham's tempi were too fast. Beecham responded, "A pity, sir, that you do not know this piece better."


I've heard the story with Delius that the composer said a certain way of playing was wrong. When they looked at the score Beecham was playing it as Delius had written it and quipped: "Ah Frederick. If only you knew your works as well as I do!"


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## Biffo (Mar 7, 2016)

Larkenfield said:


> Actually, I think it was spelled Karl, and "Beethoven, his uncle, saw him as the Beethoven to carry the illustrious musical name forward. Even before Beethoven's brother Carl's death, Beethoven saw himself as guardian of his nephew, determined to rescue him from the clutches of his (as he saw it) immoral mother... The protracted legal action that Beethoven waged against his sister-in-law is testament to his overriding determination to be in sole control of Karl's destiny."
> 
> But it seems doubtful that Karl ever saw himself as having his uncle's interest or his ability as a musician or composer. Nevertheless, it appears that Beethoven very much thought and believed it and perhaps that's why he tried so hard, out of exasperation, to get Karl out of the clutches of his mother. To imagine the two of them trying to figure out the metronome when Karl might not have been interested at all seems rather amusing.


I suppose I knew it was Karl and not Carl but I was on holiday and without my usual resources. I have been slowly working my way through Jan Swafford's biography of Beethoven and Carl (father of Karl) has featured a lot in recent chapters, hence my confusion (that's my excuse). Swafford is sceptical about the value of the metronome markings but makes no comment as to how they were obtained.

The booklet notes for the RLPO/Mackerras cycle has a short piece by Mackerras on the markings for the 9th Symphony. He says Beethoven hammered out the work on the piano and Karl attempted to set the metronome. Both of them had difficulty with the metronome being unsure whether to read the top or the bottom of the little weight. In any case, Beethoven was satisfied with the results and Mackerras says they must approximate to what he wanted. Schott made mistakes in the published edition which probably didn't help.

When Sir George Smart performed the work in London in 1825 he took 64 minutes and was incredulous when he heard that it had only taken 45 mins. in Vienna.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Biffo said:


> I suppose I knew it was Karl and not Carl but I was on holiday and without my usual resources. I have been slowly working my way through Jan Swafford's biography of Beethoven and Carl (father of Karl) has featured a lot in recent chapters, hence my confusion (that's my excuse). Swafford is sceptical about the value of the metronome markings but makes no comment as to how they were obtained.
> 
> The booklet notes for the RLPO/Mackerras cycle has a short piece by Mackerras on the markings for the 9th Symphony. He says Beethoven hammered out the work on the piano and Karl attempted to set the metronome. Both of them had difficulty with the metronome being unsure whether to read the top or the bottom of the little weight. In any case, Beethoven was satisfied with the results and Mackerras says they must approximate to what he wanted. Schott made mistakes in the published edition which probably didn't help.
> 
> *When Sir George Smart performed the work in London in 1825 he took 64 minutes and was incredulous when he heard that it had only taken 45 mins. in Vienna.*


The 9th in 45 minutes?! There must have been cuts.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> The 9th in 45 minutes?! There must have been cuts.


Just one unnecessary movement there at the end... :lol:


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## Guest (Jun 17, 2018)

The best way to perform any music by Beethoven is to judge the tempo based on things like how fast the harmony changes, what the shortest note values are, sometimes length of phrases and how regular or irregular they are in terms of structure and metrical conventions of the era.

The first movement of Beethoven's 5th can be thought of like this: The harmonic rhythm is at its fastest when there is a chord change in each bar. The shortest note values are quavers. The phrase lengths are usually a lot longer than typical groups of 4 bars (or adjustments to it), however, we can analyse them as being closer to groups of ~4 bars if we alter the music so that two bars is equal to one bar. Now we come to metrical conventions and we notice that because of the phrase lengths this piece would probably be written in alla breve (cut common or 2/2) time if it were composed by a lesser composer. Alla breve, notated with running quavers as the shortest note value, often indicated a very heavy/fast 2 in a bar feel to it; the main emphasis was on the first beat with a weaker second beat. Beethoven was probably writing this movement as something like that, especially since the shortest note values are quavers. However, he splits each potential 2/2 bar in half so that musicians give the _second_ beat of the alla breve time much more weight, like the first, and thus creates an even more powerful one in a bar feel to the music that keeps the pulse constantly on edge whilst still retaining the alla breve feel to the phrase structures based on the rate of harmonic change. Approximately 108 bars fly past per minute by splitting 2/2 in half to get two bars of 2/4, although a more conventional 2/2 notation would have it that 54 bars fly past per minute, with 108 _beats_ (two per bar) in that same minute.

We always have to remember that Beethoven was not exactly a conventional kind of guy; he found a solution that worked for what he wanted to write and a metronome marking that reflects the score very well. One mustn't forget that (like many HIP conductors seem to forget) tempi were never strictly followed throughout the course of a movement or piece in Beethoven's day; where appropriate, the musicians would slow down or speed up for expressive purposes. A metronome mark is just a guide, or an approximate average tempo, and different composers even used it differently in its early days. The best way to judge tempo is by analysing the score, not by reading a number at the top left of the first page.


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## Konsgaard (Oct 24, 2014)

Apparently Zander will have a new super fast version of the 9th out soon:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science...ny-played-20-minutes-slowly-claims-conductor/

Btw, this new recording is on Apple Music already as a pre-release. Unfortunately it's not faster than Gardiner's. I was expecting something much faster.


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## Guest (Jun 19, 2018)

SONNET CLV said:


> Does anyone happen to know at what tempo Art Tatum played the _Hammerklavier_?


The first movement is a jitterbug. The third movement a slow fox-trot.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

If Beethoven had owned a watch with a seconds hand, he could have checked the speed of the damn thing: A metronome marking of 60 would have coincided with the exact length of a minute. The seconds hand had originally been invented going all the way back to the 15th century.



> Seconds hands appeared in the 15th century on German clocks and reappeared intermittently for the next few centuries but didn't become common until the 18th century. And then they were mainly featured on pocket watches and specialized scientific clocks rather than common clocks. Even today, many clocks lack a seconds hand, though nearly all watches have one.
> 
> A seconds hand wasn't really practical to implement until the inventions of the pendulum for clocks and spiral balance spring for watches, both in the 17th century. Watchmakers added a "fourth wheel" to the standard three-wheel movement with a rotation period of one minute, and this drove the seconds hand. [unquote]
> 
> But now that the weight had been lost on Beethoven's metronome, it's too late now to check anything unless someone happens to dig up the same make and model that Beethoven used and it happens to have a weight that could be tried on his for a closer approximation of its accuracy. The speculations about his metronome have created nothing but a mess of conjecture and that was probably the last thing he intended. How ironic. He probably wanted just the opposite effect to establish a greater accuracy of tempos. The metronomic faster tempos used in some of the HIP recordings, strike me as being far too fast and they can rob the music of its depth.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I suspect that Beethoven, as a seasoned professional composer, was quite capable of judging whether his metronome was seriously out of whack. If he had a problem with tempi, it may have been a faulty acoustical memory of realistic limits imposed by reverb and so forth.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

KenOC said:


> I suspect that Beethoven, as a seasoned professional composer, was quite capable of judging whether his metronome was seriously out of whack. If he had a problem with tempi, it may have been a faulty acoustical memory of realistic limits imposed by reverb and so forth.


Apparently Beethoven had a habit of setting madly fast metronome markings for his works. And of course we are not quite sure whether he actually put them in. Probably best to follow his instructions and his tempo instructions.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

Unless the requisite time machine is invented we will never know for sure but personally I think the metronome marks are correct. I've read numerous arguments for or against over the years. Looking at what evidence we have and the research by Beck, Kolisch, Temperley, Stadlen and Rudolf (who debunked the 'sick metronome' theory), Newman and Young (excellent thesis summarising the collective evidence from conductors who knew Beethoven, letters and previous research) I'm sure Beethoven set those speeds to avoid his music being played too slow (something he clearly hated) . However, even in the decades after his death its clear that performances of his symphonies were slowed down partly due to the influence of Wagner and other conductors who further 'beautify' his music and put their own interpretive stamp on them and partly due to the inability of orchestras to play the prescribed speeds. How do I feel about all this? Tbh, I'm not bothered about tempo too much as long as it works. Inversely, I'm eternally grateful that Gardiner, Norrington and Co came along to challenge the stuffy tradition of playing Beethoven far too slowly (historically performances had got slower every decade on average). Now we have many different interpretations and with such great music as a source I'm more than happy to hear these majestic works in many different ways.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

_Metronomic controversies:_



> The metronome was soon to attract its detractors. Brahms once said 'I am of the opinion that metronome marks go for nothing. As far as I know, all composers have, as I, retracted their metronome marks in later years', indicating perhaps that people were following their indications too literally, that metronomes caused performers to play in a rhythmically inflexible tempo.
> 
> This can be seen elsewhere; for example, Liszt claimed that 'a metronomical performance is certainly tiresome and nonsensical', whilst Berlioz said that overuse of the metronome gives a performance 'an icy frigidity'. Not exactly loving words… [unquote]
> 
> ...


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

After watching many of Wim Winters' videos, before and after this thread was started, I still find his theory a bit far-fetched. Basically - and up to now he has uploaded a truckload of works played with his 'proper' metronomic interpretation - and the conclusion seems to be that _everything_ is too fast and should be played slow.

I lost interest when he posted Chopin's Revolutionary Etude played like an adagio. In the comments for that thread he took critique very badly and simply failed to answer critics' arguments. People who were pupils of Chopin (and Lizst) or pianists separated from Chopin by a single pupil and who made early recordings (like Pollini), play much quicker than Winters suggests the works should be played. I doubt very much that someone who was a direct pupil of Chopin would all of a sudden teach pupils to speed everything up to double or more the tempo.

I say: you tube quackery. Young Willem has dug himself so far into his theory he can't climb out.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

> The next important question to be discussed is related to the concept of the composer's tempo as the only possible one. This research shows that by the tempo indication and metronome marking, the composer attempts to fix his intention exactly. There arises the question of how objective this intention is. Can the composer's metronome marking be considered as a casual one, or even as the result of a mistake? In this case, the performer would have the right to supply his own corrections, which would "rectify" the composer's intentions. In other words, the question of whether the "correct tempo" is a hindrance to the freedom of the performer's individual creativity must still be answered. An attempt will be made to formulate a brief answer to this question, guided by the opinions of outstanding musicians.[unquote]
> 
> Detailed examination of Beethoven's metronome markings:
> https://symposium.music.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1992n-tempo-indications-based-on-beethovens-music


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Why are you not using actual quote tags?


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## lluissineu (Dec 27, 2016)




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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Two comments, one serious, one tongue in cheek -- each requiring a physicist to adjudicate:

1) The missing weight on Beethoven's metronome should not affect its calibration as long as _some _weight is used. I believe that, like a pendulum, the period of its swing is completely a function of the arm's length (as determined by the placement of the weight) regardless of the weight's actual mass -- so an exact duplicate is not needed.

2) An amusing (crackpot) theory I like to bring up at cocktail parties when I'm talking to scientist/engineer types, is that time really _is _speeding up, due to the expansion of the universe, the resulting decrease in the local strength of gravitational forces, and relativity. That's why time seems to speed by as you age (and as I quip: That's why the Egyptians could build the pyramids: They had more time to do it in!) Never thought before to apply that theory to Beethoven's metronome markings -- but it fits!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

MarkW said:


> 1) The missing weight on Beethoven's metronome should not affect its calibration as long as _some _weight is used. I believe that, like a pendulum, the period of its swing is completely a function of the arm's length (as determined by the placement of the weight) regardless of the weight's actual mass -- so an exact duplicate is not needed.


"The period of swing of a simple gravity pendulum depends on its length, the local strength of gravity, and to a small extent on the maximum angle that the pendulum swings away from vertical, called the amplitude. It is independent of the mass of the bob." (Wiki)

OTOH I seem to remember from my youth a mechanical metronome that would beat quite fast if I removed the weight from the swing arm. ???


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

KenOC said:


> OTOH I seem to remember from my youth a mechanical metronome that would beat quite fast if I removed the weight from the swing arm. ???


The swing arm without the weight is close to massless, hence close to lengthless, so it can go lickety-split!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

MarkW said:


> The swing arm without the weight is close to massless, hence close to lengthless, so it can go lickety-split!


I suspect the bob weight on a metronome is not like the swing weight on a pendulum. On a pendulum, gravity will act on any bob weight corresponding to its mass, and thus drive the bob in its swing with a force corresponding to its mass. A metronome is spring-driven and will drive the swing weight with the same force regardless of its mass. Thus a heavier swing weight will oscillate more slowly than a light one.

Or so it seems to me.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

There is of course the question of whether the music can be played at that speed. Apparently Chailly is very close to Beethoven's metronome markings in the symphonies but he has a virtuoso orchestra which would not have been available to Beethoven. In fact, often the orchestras were party made up of amateurs who would simply not have been able to play the music at that speed. Now certainly Chailly seems to me too fast - even rushed. So maybe Beethoven (or whoever did the markings) was indicating that he wanted the music played briskly and not dragged, as became common in the ninetieth and twentieth centuries. Int3resting that when Karajan's set came out in 1963 some critics complained it was too fast as then Klemperer was seen as the benchmark. Amazing how tastes change!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

As 'Sixty-six out of 135 of LvB's metronome markings have been regarded as "absurdly fast and thus possibly wrong," it maybe there was something wrong with his metronome or at least how he worked it. Add this to his deafness and they might just be unreliable.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-beethovens-metronome-wrong-9140958/


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## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

DavidA said:


> As 'Sixty-six out of 135 of LvB's metronome markings have been regarded as "absurdly fast and thus possibly wrong," it maybe there was something wrong with his metronome or at least how he worked it. Add this to his deafness and they might just be unreliable.
> 
> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-beethovens-metronome-wrong-9140958/


And the metronomes of Chopin and Mozart and Haydn and the composers of all the other pieces claimed by Winters?

If the metronome was wrong for the 'fast' pieces' are the slow movements also affected? Seems not.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

KenOC said:


> I suspect the bob weight on a metronome is not like the swing weight on a pendulum. On a pendulum, gravity will act on any bob weight corresponding to its mass, and thus drive the bob in its swing with a force corresponding to its mass. A metronome is spring-driven and will drive the swing weight with the same force regardless of its mass. Thus a heavier swing weight will oscillate more slowly than a light one.
> 
> Or so it seems to me.


I agree it sounds good, but then the speed of the swing arm would also be dependent on the strength of the spring, which would vary over time. Any physics teachers here?


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

MarkW said:


> I agree it sounds good, but then the speed of the swing arm would also be dependent on the strength of the spring, which would vary over time. Any physics teachers here?


Yes it is of course a precision instrument. The position of the weight determines the oscillation frequency.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

DavidA said:


> As 'Sixty-six out of 135 of LvB's metronome markings have been regarded as "absurdly fast and thus possibly wrong," it maybe there was something wrong with his metronome or at least how he worked it. Add this to his deafness and they might just be unreliable.
> 
> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-beethovens-metronome-wrong-9140958/


There are several papers and studies on the metronome marks and all agree that they are far from "absurd" and are all playable (eg Young, Stadlen, Rudolf, etc). I posted a link earlier on in this thread to a podcast showing how they can be played at such speeds which debunks the Smithsonian comments (the only paper that says the marks are 'definitely' wrong and uses mathematics as the basis for these assertations). Bear in mind that not one complete performance of a Beethoven symphony continuously reaches the speeds of the metronone markings. Some have been close but still all are slower than the markings and Chailly's is not the quickest set out there (Lan Shui and a few others play at a faster tempo). Do those sound rushed? Well thats up to you but for me no, many dont probably because theyre HIP performances using smaller orchestras, gut strings, etc) but i diverse. What you also need to consider is that we are used to hearing slower Beethoven. Faster Beethoven is not just an HIP 'new' thing. Listen to Scherchen's 50s recordings, for example, and youll see what i mean (Scherchen called Furtwangler's Beethoven "terrible" (lol) and often complained that orchestras played Beethoven too slowly). As you said, the reason for slowing down was the lack of skill of many orchestra members back then and for artistic, interpretive reasons (some believed it sounded better slower even a few years after his death). We must also bear in mind that Beethoven was a brilliant pianist so when playing through these pieces to get a metrnome mark he'd have played them at breakneck speed (i play songs i know well much quicker than they should be, on the guitar, and im crap). Do I think theyre legit? Yes. Do i think he intended his symphonies to be played quickly? No, i think he set down a marker, probably because he hated his symphonoes being played slowly. Does it matter if people disregard them? No, but its good that the 'traditional' (post Wagner) way of playing Beethoven has been challenged. It will be interesting to see what people think about the quicker performances in 50 years time. Will they become the norm - the traditional way of playing them? Only time will tell.
_
"In the future, I would like to hear more attempts by major orchestras to play Beethoven's symphonies at the proper speeds. One is hopeful that more conductors will study the findings, contained in the numerous scholarly studies, and think about how they might aid in turning around the established "traditional" performances of today into the performances Beethoven intended." (Young 1991)_


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## drmdjones (Dec 25, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> We would miss out on some of the greatest performances. The performer must serve the composer's conception as he understands it, but his understanding must be his own. If he feels the music at a tempo faster or slower than the metronome marking, the metronome must yield.


This is why I prefer the designation "interpreter" to "performer."


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

Gee, maybe somebody should have held onto that weight from Beethoven’s metronome, because since then, everyone can just make up whatever they want to believe about it’s accuracy and no one can prove anything.


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