Admitting DEFEAT. This proves Whole Beat never was a thing.
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 เม.ย. 2024
- Titles and thumbnails. Is it clickbait? For you to figure out. Some conflicting sources from The Etude, an American late 19th c. journal. Main question: what do we buy with it?
--
Check out our recordings here: www.authenticsound.org/record...
--
🙋Join our Patreon community and help us create more content▶ / authenticsound
--
📩Stay informed! Join our mailinglist (yes we have one too!) 👉bit.ly/as-mailinglist
--
📱 Website: ▶www.authenticsound.org - เพลง
![TREASURE - 'KING KONG' COMEBACK SPECIAL [THE TREASURE SHOW]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Jx1wyMaQzf0/mqdefault.jpg)
It’s the same with the oft repeated, romanticized, journalistic phrase, that seems to be loved, which is “athletic piano writing“; what on earth does that mean? Nobody goes to a concert to listen to athletic piano writing, we go but to listen to music! Once you write athleticism as the product, instead of aesthetics and music and artistic message, themes, etc., music has already been relegated to a second or worse place.
With the dexterity obsessed point of view, one can understand why formalistic analyses of music have come about. Because then any human, sincere artistic message is but forgotten as only dexterity matters and anything sonorous is allowe; under those insane speeds, what only matters, is just to talk about harmonies and structures, but then the emotive effect of each written phrase has no longer aesthetic meaning, no human connection. That may explain the formalistic obsession of the 20th century.
Music became condemned to description, not of even spiritual internalization. “He wrote that this way because”. “They just wrote this in this ternary form and with silences here and tonality and atonality and what not, with athletic piano writing”. That may explain the alienations many have felt with recent music and why in Movies soundtracks some humaneness is still present.
What’s more: one can even say that all this stems from the misunderstanding of the metronome. It’s the culprit why the speed obsession came about and the reason of the last century music output; of the obsession and even lack of progress from the mythical, unreachable SB ideal.
Never heard that phrase before.
Perhaps you want every phrase to be non athletic. Stiff, inflexible and earthbound is the alternative.
And I will never say you should not like it that way.
@@Pablo-gl9dj OK, Mr. Expert,
"Chopin's preludes are not even the most problematic." There's a whole Liszt of other problems.
Haha right!
Open the video for the title, stayed for the puns.
😂
They are Haydn the problems, so they never come Bach.
Is there no documentation regarding the duration of performances? Are there no diaries, letters, or articles saying that Beethoven's 9th was either 1 or 2 hours long? Surely this is written somewhere.
Or did you already do a video on this?
Your performances of Chopin's etudes - regardless of authenticity - are still fantastic in my opinion!
One of the finest pianos I ever played was a rebuilt Mason and Hamlin grand regulated to have a relatively light touch and there is no way that anyone could have played those kinds of single-beat readings on it. Unfortunately the owner knew how good it was so the idea of making an offer for it was out of the question. I'd love to have owned it.
I keep following you on and off through the years on this topic, I keep understanding only half the stuff (no formal musical training), yet with all the ups and downs it remains as interesting and educational as the first day.
Czerny's work was titled "Schule der Gelaüfigkeit." There are many ways to translate that, but School of Velocity is not one. Gelaüfigkeit can mean easiness, facility, skill, fluency, ease. The book appears intended to impart facility of playing to the student, not velocity. It was translated into French and published in Paris in 1833 under the mistaken title "L'etude de la vélocité." Velocité has cognates in Italian, Spanish, and other Romance languages as well as English, all of them meaning speed. And so the original error was transmitted around the world--a mistranslation that has tortured all subsequent generations of piano students.
One might surmise that the mistranslation had the intention of feeding the growing desire at the time for ever faster performance, making the title a kind of 19th century "clickbait" by the French publishing house. Or, perhaps some poor translator earning pennies an hour in some Paris garret confused Gelaüfigkeit with Geschwindigkeit, and the result pleased his employer. Or some other among the thousand-fold accidents and improbabilities upon which history often turns. One will never know.
@@dorette-hi4j I think we could do better than to accuse one another of complete ignorance.
The version I initially cited is from 1833. I looked back to IMSLP for an 1840 version in German and found this one published in Vienna by A. Diabelli & Company. vmirror.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/c/cf/IMSLP593590-PMLP3452-czerny_op299_diabelli_CzerDie_49124441X.pdf
The full title is “Die Künstlerbahn des Pianisten, oder: Die Kunst des practischen Pianofortespiels in fünf Werke” [The pianist's artistic trajectory, or: The art of practical piano playing in five works], namlich: I. Die Schule der Gelaüfigkeit [namely: The School of Fluency] (op. 299) II.Die Schule des Legato und Staccato [The School of Legato and Stacatto] (op. 335.) . . . and so forth.
There is no Schnelligkeit [speed] mentioned here at all. So I could not be 100% wrong. Yet, if you found a German edition from 1840 with the word Schnelligkeit in the subtitle, though you did not cite it, that would still make me only 50% wrong . . . and yet also 50% right. (I feel much better being only half an ass.)
And then there remains the problem of how the human organism is to perform these works at Mach 2 speed, if the correct reading of the M.M. notation is single beat, as you seem to be so certain of. For my part, I cannot but suspect that there is more subtlety here than can be resolved by a book title.
A tick in between each beat makes sense, because it sets the tempo. When you hear the second tick you know how long it will be to the third one.
Think about other things where we keep a rhythm; we often say "1 and 2 and 3 and 4....". I would think that the in between tick of whole beat would serve the same function.
Though other percussion instruments such as drums count in 4's ("1 ee-and-ah 2 ee-and-uh 3 ee-and-uh 4 ee-and-uh").
I've seen the whole video, and am commenting to further please our lord the algorithm.
As for comments, I'll just say that this is all pretty obvious to me. I don't research but I'm a fan of History podcasts, and a fan of the mentality needed to think about history, that of probability rather than a search for undeniable facts. People from centuries ago were extremely different, what gave them purpose and security were very different things. We must always assume that we don't really know what meaning they put behind the words they wrote, even communicating with our own is treacherous enough.
This is such common sense. It's tragic that people are so resistant to plain logic in favor of "the sunk cost fallacy." I just heard someone today, people don't get mad at people that mislead them, they tend to get mad at people who make them aware they've been misled.
Dear Sir, I have intermittently followed your crusade over the years, and I feel you are basically correct - and then there are the oddities like the discussion you quote in this video, which puzzles us a little more. So be it. However, I would like to raise another point, which maybe has already been made, but which necessarily creates a context to the whole issue. The quality of the music. I am a poor amateur with little technique - but the little technique that I have was not created by trying to play Czerny at any speed. It was created by playing Bach, up to (excerpts from) the Wohltemperiertes Klavier, the Suites and Partitas, the Kunst der Fuge and the Goldberg Variations. And, mind you, Bartok’s Mikrokosmos. By trying those pieces of confounding greatness as beautifully as possible, with respect for harmonic richness, voicing, clarity of the counterpoint and sensitive "toucher”. Love and admiration prompted me to “work”, and slowly I reached levels where my playing showed a little of the music’s endless beauties.. to me. Never would I have thought of playing Czerny - because that music is to my ears ugly. It is one-dimensional music with idiotic melody lines, no counterpoint at all and ridiculous harmonic progressions. (The anti-Wagner, definitely.) Potentiality of speed is its only “quality” - if, at least, the cultural context (the full industrialisation of the American 19th century, yes) is considered. If sheer speed is a quality looked for by an audience, then by all means we should play music designed for it, as fast as possible. And occasionally we do find composers who throw that requirement into the mix and we get the Finale of Schumann’s 3rd sonata or Prokofiev’s Toccata (as just one element of the mix). But mostly, the great musical masterworks do NOT choose that dimension for the display of their excellence - and as a result, slowing down their usual performance actually helps us understand the depth of their real greatness. The most excellent pianists of last century - Cortot, Cziffra, Gieseking, Richter, Gould, Sofronitsky etc. etc. modulated tempo according to the depth of their understanding at the moment of performance. The choice for an occasionally very slow tempo (Richter in Schubert!) is entirely, and always, and always entirely, justified by their love and admiration for the greatness of the music performed, and of the genius who composed it.
Check the gorgeous 48 Preludes and Fugues op. 856 by Czerny!
26:40 this quotes hits hard, hard. If he was critisizing the tastes of this time, what would he say about us moderns ?
good question!
Maybe already at that time no one would like to be the first to admit that the emperor is naked.
Interesting. Question: Is it possible that metronome marks with quarternotes were single beat BUT metronome marks with half notes were double beat (and maybe even metronome marks with eighth notes half beat)?
Thanks for another super great one. 🙂🙏🏼🌺
I have watched several of you videos on this issue, they answered many questions and I like them. So far your focus seems to be on the Piano works. I am just curious how does this theory fits into music written for wind instruments and voices of the time? Are there cases where half of written tempo would suffocate the performer?
no. on the contrary, they finally get tile to breath
I seem to be unable to reply to Mr W in the thread about "Le pianiste".
I tried several times but it keeps disappearering.
What happened there?
I have no idea - it happens that yt (by default) puts comments in a separate folder ('held for review')- I never check that folder but did now, and neither of you are there. So good job (to both of you) :-). But I have no idea what could happen to your comments.
Perhaps the relative or perceptual flow of time itself has been variable throughout history.
In the "Early Music Scene" the tempi seem to be increasing without limit. I suspect the only way you can be original in music that's been recorded 100 times is to beat some speed record, as there are no metronome markings in the baroque (or are there?). Interesting to get our comments. The super fast speeds are not only unplayable, if you could play it, it would sound terrible anyways (assuming real music, not Czerny).
It's clear that historic Tempo marks are problematic, being at times impossibly fast or unmusically slow. Czerny's "The School of Velocity" must have been written to address some prevalent issues, challenges, or problems. The style and techniques in each of the compositions should be an obvious clue to the purpose of each Study - Velocity.
Tempo and voicing are the emergent phenomena of properly composed music.
I'm always surprised by the fast tempo of Schumann performances. Are we playing Schumann too fast?
in general today, absolutely. Though some pieces (eg Träumerei) is still played in whole beat
The only thing I don't understand is how this information could have been lost. All over the world thousands of piano teachers teach students who then become piano teachers who teach students, and this has been going on since the piano has existed.
Where exactly in this process could the original, correct understanding of tempo indicators have become lost?
We are now entering into the realm of 'conspiracy theories'!! My theory is that simply bad pianists are discovering how faux 'musicology' can be used to turn a deficit into a virtue and to turn them into fraudulent TH-cam stars.
Already signs in the 1820s of that same confusion. Made a video on Reger -Straube, check it out, it ties into your question
There was no loss because there is no historical evidence for double-beat and plenty of evidence that disproves it
@@wilh3lmmusic:
Keep up with your athletic piano playing; meanwhile I'll be listening to actual music.
It's the same thing with everything that becomes apparently obsolete. Let a child from today use a rotary dial telephone, and they will be somewhat lost or confused. If you have a certain age: no problem. But do you deem it necessary to explain to your children or grandchildren outdated knowledge?
In terms of the sheet music: Even if you play older music, you might be more likely to buy a new edition or print of your Beethoven sonatas (or whatever you want to play). The editors have often changed the metronome marks, probably according to the taste of the time, or they could also leave them out if they were confusing. A feeling of "Allegro" in 1820 was not identical with the feeling of "Allegro" in 1920 or 2020. So basically, needing to relate to whole beat metronome marks became less necessary: More modern composers wrote with single beat metronome marks anyway, and for older composers, the editors might had changed the metronome mark into single beat metronome marks for practical reasons. Yes, you might at one point come across a metronome mark that doesn't make sense, but you relate to it a bit like a child to the rotary dial telephone.
Practically, I have f.ex. been in that place where you are playing Schumann's piano quintet. Chamber music in the 19th century was often written to incorporate amateurs (after all, they are the ones supposed to buy the music), and as an amateur (in a mixed group consisting of people with and without conservatory education, not so different from who would have played the music in the 19th century) I can tell you that the old metronome readings in whole beat do make a lot of sense. When you play faster, you are more likely to make compromises or "cheat" a bit. But then the "feeling" for the tempo takes over (or maybe a memory of how that piece sounded played by somebody else?), you "feel" how fast a piece should be played, and you do not play in that speed. You take metronome marks in the score only as an orientation. I do not think that we (our quintet) are the exception from the rule. Sometimes, I feel close to turning off the radio when I hear someone rush through a piece of classical music.
A question arises then: what happened between the early and late parts of the 19th century that resulted in the pendulum usage of the metronome to be almost lost?
Nothing, since this "pendulum usage" never existed
@@wilh3lmmusic Why then, were early 19th century composers so specific and consistent about writing crazy high metronome marks?
@@dorette-hi4j I highly doubt that, especially that we are now in the age of incredible technical virtuosity, pushing the absolute limits of the human body and rushing in all matters of life.
It doesn't stand to reason that people from 200 years ago (and over) were exceeding technically what we are capable now, and it is certainly not befitting of that era for them to want to do so.
@@theskoomacat7849well if you check Kullak’s edition of Chopin study, he says that back in the day (of Czerny, who was his teacher) it was a thing to play music as fast as they could.
@@minkyukim0204 "it was a thing to play music as fast as they could." But was that the intention of the composers' mm marks? If yes, why bother? Were Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, etc. etc. concerned their music was being played too slowly? They cold have just written Presto on everything and left it at that. "As fast as they could" requires no objective indicator.
I recently saw this written on facebook about Frederic Lamond quoted by Herbert Von Karajan.
"In 1989, Karajan told his biographer Richard Osborne: “I once was engaged to conduct a concert in Mannheim and the pianist who had been engaged was Frederic Lamond. I had on the programme Brahms’ Fourth Symphony and at the rehearsal Lamond said to me, ‘You know, I knew Brahms; I heard him conduct this piece.’ You can imagine the effect this had on me. I was terrified. Later on there was a reception. Lamond was talking to some people and then as he was leaving he came by me and said, ‘But, you know, it wasn’t all as beautiful as you might imagine! ’Some things at that time were no doubt very good; but I suspect if we could hear some of them now we simply would not tolerate them.”
Lamond could have very easily been talking about tempi as one of those "things" that the modern audience would find "intolerable."
Hanon stated the whole Virtuoso pianist in 60 minutes all four books. An pianist of ability said otherwise. The Piano Foundation video of Czerny school of velocity video takes 51:18.
Dr. Richard Lert, one of my conducting teachers, told me often that almost everyone in the 20th century played everything TOO FAST. Why were his comments so important? He knew Brahms, Richard Strauss, Wagner, and dozens of other famous composers and performers. And besides, A = 440 + is far too high. A=432 should be the highest tuning with A = 415 the norm. Higher string tensions reduce maximum responsiveness.
I will say that as far as the Velocity Etudes go, the given marks are aspirational rather than real. I mean, for those who compose away from the piano, it's probably more likely they estimate mm (or maybe Czerny could not play it that fast himself and after finding his own tempo on the metronome, looked for a wildly high one above that, so that even those who could play as fast as him would continue to improve their velocity) or, since the Czerny piece is thee same tempo as a Beethoven symphony, he may have thought of that tempo (being familiar with the score as most composers wouldve been) and affixed it to the first study.
that is factually not correct. Czerny's MMs were never described as targets but as real tempi, and in the 19th c. not even as problematic.
You don't have to go to the end of the 18-hundreds or cross the Atlantic to find clear single beat descriptions of Czerny.
The french magazine "Le pianiste" wrote this about op. 299 when it was first published :
"Presque tous ces etudes exigent 800 notes a la minute"
They also commented on the tempi being "exessive"
So maybe the question is not if, but WHY Czerny wrote superfast speeds for his etudes.
I think he was trying to push piano-technique to the limit in an almost obsessive way, and in doing so sometimes raised the bar one knotch to high.
And if he (and others)
hadn't done it, someone else would.
It's human nature.
you answered your own comment in the sense that you consider these etudes to be set at impossible speeds for whatever reasons, in the 19th c. they did not have issues with the resulting speeds. it is an essential difference.
You may find descriptions, but not playings. Zilch reviews of those tornadoes. Paper can handle everything.
@@AlbertoSegovia. Zilch descriptions of Czerny etudes in whole beat - that is a fact.
And of course there are no reviews from concerts - op 299 was never intended to be anything else than fingerexercises.
@@olofstroander7745 Well, what’s the consternation then, about the 800 notes per minute in 40 studies to be played one after the other in completion? “Don’t waste my time with those charlatans wasting ink,”
@@olofstroander7745Oh I’m working in a hypothesis: They did not receive the missive from Czerny’s bureau that the etudes were to be played in hiding, free of any academic discussion. WB disproved!
Unfortunately, i must take ordinary people in defence. I meet (in my job, church music) many more people who say "you played very well" after a fast or/and loud piece, than true music lovers. Unfortunately, I get paid from both. The many first and the few seconds.
thank you for this excellent video
Thats a record of Doctor Brahms hself on internet. He plays the piano some seconds. Comment that for us.
😮
At the time of the recording, Brahms was old and fat. Yet, he played some Hungarian dances (I will have to check) quickly and erratically. No Gould s l o w. Gusto comes to mind.
th-cam.com/video/fLURJxEPib8/w-d-xo.html
Correct - It is like driving a car with a MPH speedometer whilst reading the speed limit signs in KPH- you will be stopped by the police very soon!
@@dorette-hi4j Concrete thinking. If I leave in the morning and return in the evening have I been gone a day?
How do you handle compound times (6/8 etc)? Half beat would set the other beat in 2:3. Do you have a video about that? Thanks in advance
First
:-O. Every “Tic” can have its “Tock” so it is NOT clear that single beat or Whole beat is meant
single beat is a "subdivision" of whole beat, therefore there is a level of being intertwined, therefore context is always key and therefore (3 times) formulating the problem one seeks to solve (too fast MMs) is a critical startint point. Lot's of discussions about true or not stem from a different starting point. When you take SB as the foundation, then of course you'll have a different reading, perspective. But at the end one should always come back to: did this help solving the initial problem?
It annoys me a lot that you keep using the unusually fast tempi as solid proof that the whole beat theory is completely accurate. There's no proof that the solution to this is to play all of classical music till how far the whole beat theory is valid twice as slow. As you say, the screenshot at 11:48 is a clear case for single beat, and you seem to agree. But then you basically go on to say that it's invalid because Czerny's op 299 is impossible in single beat? You still didn't disprove the text. Also, Czerny's op 299 isn't that ''veloce'' in double beat if you ask me.
These tempi are not 'unusally fast', they are impossible. One must be as precise as possible in these matters. this difference is not a nuance.
This doesn't change the main point of my comment. Why would I talk about a solution for pieces that are possible? With that out of the way, could you now reply to the comment please?
you answered your own question- people in the 19thc never talked about " a solution", that narrative started only in the 20th c.
A solution is still not the main point of my comment.
@@dorette-hi4j Yes. It's insane to draw such a big conclusion only because of that. When you show them something that clearly disproves the double beat theory, they'll just answer my telling you to play some of the pieces that are impossible at the given metronome mark.
Those who cannot do, cover their inability with the authority of a publication…
To most music artists, metronome marks are relative, and the right tempo of a piece cannot be dictaded by a metronome mark. So to me it seems that those genius composers and artists just made fun of those mathematic dictaded' tempo signs.....
In fact the opposite is the case, even Beethoven, 3 months before he died asked his published to wait with the publication of his Missa for him to sent metronome marks- the world needs them Beethoven said, as in the same message he contributed the success of his 9th in Berlin to his MMs. All composers in those decades cared a lot about the correct tempo, not hard to reconstruct this in fact
@@AuthenticSound Haha, I know and a genius composer like Beethoven must have been sarcastic, i think. I just cant imagine such genius dictating non-artistic metronome marks....
@@PortatoPianoyou should hear wims recording of the 9th symphony because then you would see just how beautiful following those “unmusical metronome marks” can be…
@@Ezekiel_Pianist I will listen to it.
But would it be less if it is played 5 or 10% faster...?
couldnt find that symphony, but listened to the appassionata... For me very clear now that the whole beat approach, with all respect, isnt the way to go!
So in the first half of the 19th century metronome marks were used to indicate slow tempi and toward the end of the 19th century the were used to impose even faster tempi 🥲 what an irony…
bpm is certainly mysterious. On one hand, I think it's fairly easy for any single person to figure out what tempo music is best at. You just use your ears and common sense. Scott Joplin's cakewalks are certainly best at 120bpm or lower, like Jolpin says in the notes "Not too fast." However, we have piano rolls with Joplin playing and he's bouncing it around at 140 or faster and it sounds janky like a tack piano in a spaghetti western. Awful. Joplin played his own songs at the wrong temp violating his clearly indicated markings. Then there are the impossible markings of the various etudes which you have covered well. Those are impossibly fast. On the other hand we have plenty of dances written in the baroque and classical periods which are properly notated. We know that a dance needs to be right around 120bpm or else you can't physically dance to it properly. Gravity and the proportions of the human body limit you severely. And some of those markings are exactly right. It's a mystery why so many of the tempo markings are way off. I don't think whole beat is the answer because it makes too much of the music impossibly slow at least to my ears. The thing is, in a performance, despite clear indications of the composer, the performances tend to all come out at the same tempo plus or minus. In real life we all know how fast we want to play the pieces and we all know what it sounds best as. I was recently practicing Hassler's Sonata in A minor a beautiful piece by myself and the tempo says "Poco Allegro" and after playing I counted how fast it was and it turned out to be 90bpm, then I listened to sgrizzi play it and it was over 200bpm. Technically there's no difficulty playing this at over 200bpm or even 300bpm. It's a simple piece. Who is right who is wrong I don't know. Then I listened to Michele Benuzzi play this same piece and she or he played it at nearly the exact tempo I did. Mysterious! But for sure playing this piece by Hassler is never a case of whole beat, the same way that playing Joplin is never a problem of whole beat. It's recent enough that we have recordings of people playing the pieces. Just like we have recordings of Brahms playing his own pieces that Edison recorded. The entire thing of how fast to play a piece is mysterious to me and there's more going on here than just doubling or halving the metronome markings. It's just not that simple. I'd like you to branch out and discuss more modern pieces that are played at the wrong tempo not just classical or baroque.
Your example of Joplin and the piano rolls is slightly misleading because piano rolls, as a consequence of how the technology worked at the time, ran very fast and made what would in a live performance be a moderate tempo sound in a piano roll to be insanely and sometimes comically fast. They are not accurate representations of ragtime, but have I would agree bastardized the modern understanding of "ragtime" as the average listener doesn't even know what a piano roll is!
@terpsichore21 I'm no expert on piano rolls but I know there are different kinds and some of them are calibrated so you play them properly