Beethoven's Impossible Bach Tempos: He Really Hated Bach That Much?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- Marten Noorduin published in 201 an important article with the telling title: Czerny's 'impossible' metronome marks. The obvious answers were in front of the author but, as with many others, he presumably didn't see it. And since he used also the metronomisation Czerny made for Bach's work as an example of the impossibility, and since Czerny relates to Beethoven, we can safely say that, in case a modern reading of the metronome is correct, Beethoven hated Bach.
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Unrealistic tempi cause many students to give up and quit.
Managed to make it to the end, even though lately videos are longer and longer every day 😆 . Yes, as you probably saw yourself, I had this very discussion on the comments of your previous videos just because some people not only don't get it but, apparently, they got pissed because some of us professional musicians had those same doubts about the subject in the past and now in the light of the evidence are supportive about your more than well documented hypothesis. Don't know why, to be honest, but they just don't try to at least listen and review all those evidences and all, and now here you are exactly with the kind of things those told me not to be truth just because, again stuffed with obvious evidences those blind ones will keep rejecting. Ok, good for them, I understood and made my mind about this many time ago for obvious reasons, not understanding or trying to be open minded is just a problem of theirs. Don't get discouraged by those Wim, you're making an outstanding job with all of this and sometime future musicians will have to face the truth that for a century and a half we've just been blind idiots with this evidences in front of us all the time... Thanks for your work and for showing it to all of us.
Now, I've taken so much time to complete the video I already have another video of yours to watch... 🤣 Great video, as usual, by the way. Bye!
I would type "clickbait title", but as I understand the point you will make, that the Metronome Marks are impossibly fast "if in single beat"...As to Beethoven, the young titan previous to his study under Neefe, also in Bonn started with Vogler's 1778 Tonschule. When Neefe took him under his wing, Beethoven began with CPE Bach's Essay on the True Art of Keyboard Playing (which Czerny as condition of being a student of Beethoven required a copy of CPE Bach's Essay on the True Art of Keyboard Playing).
That being said, Count van Swieten, who previously been a patron of CPE Bach in Berlin, Haydn, Mozart, and subsequently Beethoven, had the new Eagle perform The Well Tempered Clavier, in which Beethoven was well known for his performances early in the career. (Mozart arranged Fugues for String Trio which he played with van Swieten).
As to Czerny's MM marks, as to the Well Tempered Clavier, Czerny mentioned his influence of Beethoven playing the works and his long association with these pieces (possibly from Beethoven's tutelage), which also cautioned that the tempo term Allegro was slower in Bach's time than at that time.
The MM marks of Czerny and the Czerny's caution on the Allegro provides quite a Dichotomy. As Czerny's indication in Single Beat interpretation of Allegro is in some pieces incredibly to impossibly fast.
I have the following Metronome Marks C major prelude part 1 (Thiel 1) Czerny 1/4=112, Bischoff = 112 (Bischoff who differs on MM marks in the Inventions), Mugellini=108, Hughes= 112, Bartok =88-92. Performance from recordings Demus=69, Fischer=96. Gould=60, Gulda=69, Martins=72, Richter=72, Tureck=52. And the C major prelude is an easy piece. I have the MM for both parts of the WTC...part one has all the information presented above, and the MM for Czerny and Bischoff or part 2, but I wouldn't want to type on a touch screen on an iPad. However, the Tempo Ordinario speeds would by in the range of Whole Beat circa 60 bpm for C, become slower when the note lengths decrease.
I wonder how teachers treat these metronome marks.
"My dear student, please buy a metronome and adjust it to the indicated tempo. Get an idea of the speed the piece is to be played at. But since you can't reach that tempo anyway, just throw the metronome out the window and play as fast as you can" 😂
My first piano teacher actually did not use the metronome, she taught her students to count and feel the music.
@@Renshen1957and that is magical; a method that works for me is, in a passage inside the work, imagine that I’m about to start to play the piece from the beginning with the tempo I had in my head then. Don’t know why it hadn’t occurred to me before, (besides not being actively taught).
And my “adult teacher” made me buy a metronome, to learn six pieces, but for the Mozart G sonata K283 with the marked sheet, he scratched the number and said, we’ll ignore this,
@@AlbertoSegovia. Wow!
@@georgefoss1824 and it was not because I was not to reach a “decent” level. The other pieces were: “Inventio X” (ha, to be Latinate), a study by Czerny, which have forgotten, but I vaguely remember it started with a dotted or strong cord in LH and a descending run or scale in the RH, followed by other chords in the left; Scriabin’s work 42, number 5 (this work I had learned myself but never academicized, didn’t follow any numbers); the Tarantella by Pieczonka (way too fast - never mastered it); and a (too fast) waltz. They were for a presentation. (And it was inside a Conservatory)
Single beat gets more and more unlistenable..
Having listened to Chopin's etudes played at the correct tempo (can't recall the pianist right now) it really is almost impossible to hear "normal" playings of it, it's just way too fast and doesn't sound nearly as good.
@@hoon_sol Agreed, it's a blur of notes. I love the Wolfgang Weller recordings at whole beat. Just ask any regular non-musician which sounds better, a "competition" performance of an etude or a whole beat recording, and you'll get your answer. They might be impressed by the speed of the competition performance, but as overall music the whole beat rendering is much more musical.
@@NikhilHoganShow This isn't very scientific: the conjectured opinions (since you don't cite any statistical survey) of present-day non-musicians; "its a blur of notes"; "whole beat rendering is much more musical". Your own personal opinions shouldn't enter into scholarly discussions of historical tempi. It is disappointing, since your own channel deals with partimento and other renaissance/baroque practices in a genuinely enlightening way.
@@DismasZelenka Sorry to disappoint!
@@DismasZelenka:
Wim has already presented the mountains of scholarly evidence for it. Now we get to talk about how we subjectively experience the truth of it. Cry us a river if you don't like it.
I had many conversations (not arguments, I was just wandering) about following metronome marks with many teachers and many many more of my friends at conservatory. Absolutely nobody followed them unless is a modern piece. I feel left out for just caring about what the score says
Edit: 44:06 I'm still here!
There is an interesting parallel that took place in early Silent Films regarding speed. "Filming: Most silent films were filmed at around 16-18 frames per second (fps). Projection: Silent films were projected at a faster frame rate, closer to 20-24 fps."
That is 20-25% faster than what would have been the original, true speed. And the music that often accompanies Silent Films would have also been sped up that amount to keep in time with the action on the Screen. 🤔
Don't feel discouraged Wim. Most of the people that are resistant to the obvious truths of whole beat are reacting because of the "sunk cost" fallacy. They have invested so much into single beat and achieving the fastest speeds, they have the majority of people agreeing with them and they have a vague idea of subjective tempi. They can't let it go easily. It's a part of their group identity. It's in some ways their religion. I remember hearing the pianist Micha Dichter say in a master class, "You have to find the right tempo for you." At the same time I asked him about adherence to the notes. He stressed how important it was to follow the score. I brought up the changes Rachmaninoff made in his recordings. He said, "Well, he was a force of nature." Sounds good, but in the end, the score only means so much to some people.
You are making history, thank you for your work
Well done, Wim! Your rigorous dedication to the truth, as against generally accepted beliefs, is always inspiring. [Not trying to "butter" you up, or anything.]
We know that some composers compose at the keyboard but others away from the keyboard. As described here, Czerny was composing multiple pieces at the same time at multiple desks. So the tempos he gave might be only what imagined at the time. How do we know he ever actually played his compositions at the given tempos?
with 40 years of 8 hour daily teaching he presumably would have known if something was wrong!
Peer reviewing is a corrupt system in some fields.
So... Publish a peer-reviewed article. Or submit an article to _Gramophone magazine_. :-) Allez au delà de ce mot de 5t-John Perse : « C'est assez, pour le poète, d'être la mauvaise conscience de son siècle. » (_Discours de réception du prix Nobel de littérature_)
This is amazing! There is one simple logical explanation, and then there are these absurd conjectures: the composer had a broken metronome and didn't know how to use it, these precise metronome markings are only aspirational to encourage faster playing, the metronome markings are only valid for the first few bars anyway, most contemporaries played slower for some reason, the action was lighter, keyboards were narrower. Did I forget something?
And everyone happily agrees that the metronome markings are always problematic unlike everything else in the score.
Noorduin agrees that the first three conjectures are invalid, he discusses the reasons for contemporaries playing slower (read his article yourself), and it is true that lighter actions, narrower keys, and less sonority made for faster speeds possible on early pianos (and there are nineteenth-century sources that actually say so).
The broken metronome of Beethoven doesn't make sense, as Maezel gift Beethoven Two (2) Metronomes, one 7 inch and the other 12 inches. Karl Beethoven worked with with his Uncle Ludwig for the MM of the Ninth Symphony, Beethoven played Karl set the Metronome.
@@DismasZelenkaI will presume you haven't played any fortepianos contemporary or their recreations with those used by Beethoven. Single Escapement action, In 1823, produced his model grand pianoforte with the double escapement. That lighter action, slighter key-fall was quoted with Eva B. Skoda, and perpetuated with Sandra Rosenblum's book. No one to date has been able to play all metronome marks of Beethoven, or Czerny in singlebeat
@@georgefoss1824 Your presumption is correct - I haven't. But there are now many specialist fortepianists, who do not waste their time trying to 'prove' something that every musician knows, that metronome marks indicate the note value, or the beat if it is the same as the note value, with a single tick. When it comes to Beethoven's symphonies, there are conductors who take his metronome marks as a guide, not to 'prove' anything, but to display and explore the music as Beethoven's contemporaries may have heard it. Paavo Järvi is one, Roger Norrington another, preceded by Hermann Scherchen and Rene Leibowitz.
My piano teacher told me "if you want to play the really difficult pieces, you will need to practice Hanon at quarter note = 132 or more." I mean really?
yes. really. Practice until you can reach 160 in every key
Will the Metronome Project Database go back in time to the music of Bach, Pachelbel, etc? You mentioned how Bach's Allegro might be Beethoven's Andante - if I heard that correctly. We definitely need the database to separate the composers and their eras from each other - especially when moving through the 19th & 20 centuries.
well, it will contain all MMs given to music that was composed before the invention of the metronome, for sure
Still here! Again, proof after proof the metronome markings aren't to be read in single beat.
I never fail to watch to the end, been here since the start! Still blows my mind.
Double beat is way too complicated a concept, why would any 1 have invented it like that. you have to tell your student to ignore an audible tick and play your note on the second tick. Hear tick play note, that is just easy.
Czerny’s mm’s do seem unrealistic indeed. I think it is single beat intention though, but don’t know why so high, we would have to ask Czerny which is alas impossible.
Im studing Czerny´s Art of finger dexterity. At first i was just doing separade hands etc. When i was doing de fingering righ etc i looked at the metronome mark. Started to laght kkkkkkkkkkkkkk
I recently listened to some Mozart pieces for 4 hands, looking for pieces I could play with my teacher. Guess what, faster and faster, machine music. Bad stuff played by pros, but no music at all.
Marten Noorduin should employ Occam' s razor. A lot of implausible assumptions just to support absurd conclusions.
Implausible assumptions? Such as?
@@DismasZelenka Czerny wrote only for the absolute high performers, the metronome marks are not meant seriously, for example. Just listen to the music in this abstruse tempi.
Another argument. Bachs Baroque Suits are based on dances (Allemande, Gigue, Sarabande, Courante, aso ). Can You imagine people in Baroque attires are dancing in such a speed. In a time when a running horse has been the fastet thing on earth.
@@m.walther6434 Czerny School for Virtuosi (Op.365) and School of Velocity (Op.299) were indeed designed to train "absolute high performers", virtuosi, and Noorduin does not conclude that the MMs were not meant seriously. They are an ultimate goal, which not all would achieve; not everybody becomes a virtuoso, many remain dilettanti.
Czerny collected five books of his most advanced studies (Opp, 299, 335, 355, 399, 400) into one collection, which he called Die Künstlerbahn des Pianisten.
He says that "Das Ganze bildet demnach eine vollständige praktische Fortepiano-Schule, und umfasst das Wesentlichste, *was den Spieler bis zum Virtuosität erheben und heranbilden kann.* Es entspricht somit dem Gewählten Gesammt-Titel durch den Zweck: Die Bahn des *ausübenden Künstlers* zu leiten und zu ordnen.
In the preface to op. 400 (The School of Fugue Playing) he refers to his very fast tempi thus: "Gegenwärtige Studien haben den Zweck, die Finger des Spielers an alle diese Formen anzugewöhnen, und es ist desshalb für die meisten derselben das nützlichere schnelle Tempo gewählt worden, da sich naturlicherweise all diese Figuren im langsamen Zeitmass sodann um so leichter ausführen lassen."
From Czerny's preface to Bach's Two-Part Inventions, you will see he may have thought Bach's Little Preludes, Two-Part Inventions, and Sinfonias were Etudes with the same sort of purpose (not to say he was necessarily right). The MMs Czerny gives for the French Suites, and for the 48 Preludes and Fugues, are more moderate.
I don't know much about baroque dance, or costume, but are you sure that people of those times couldn't move quickly on the dance floor? In any case, Czerny is editing Bach for his own time, not for the 1700s. And, as I said, his tempi for the French Suites seem quite normal and achievable to me.
What horses have to do with it all escapes me. Depending on breed, horses can run at 25-30 mph (most horses), or 45-50 mph (specialized race horses); meanwhile the vehicular land-speed record set in 1997 is 763 mph. Does that mean we now dance 15 to 30 times faster than we did when "a running horse has been the fastest thing on earth"?
More on Czerny and training of virtuosi in his preface to Op.356, Die Schule des Virtuosen (the very work Noorduin's Ex. 1 is taken from, 7:08):
In allen Künsten ist die vollendete Beherrschung des Stoffes die erste Erforderniss der Meisterschaft, und wer Alles dessen vollkommen mächtig ist, was der Mindergeübte Schwierigkeiten nennt, der ist ein Virtuose (Meister) in seinem Fache. Das Studium der Schwierigkeiten auf dem Fortepiano ist weder so abschreckend und mühsam, wie Viele glauben, noch so überflüssig und entbelirlich, wie manche Andere behaupten; - denn nur die vollkommenste Beherrschung der mechanischen Kunst macht es möglich, die Schönheit des Vortrags und Gefühls, welche dem einfacheren Gesange zukommt, auch auf diejenigen Stellen anzuwenden, welche dem Misskennenden oder Ungeübten nur eine Anhäufung von Unbequemlichkeiten zu seyn scheinen, welche aber unter den Fingern des wahren Künstlers eben so den Schönheitssinn befriedigen können, wie jede einfachere Melodie, und überdiess jeder Kunstleistung weit mehr Glanz und Leben verleihen.
Die Vervollkommnung der Fortepiano, und das Bedürfniss des fortschreitenden Zeitgeschmacks macht alles dieses möglich, nothwendig, und sogar leicht. Um zu diesem bedeutenden Ziel in möglichst kurzer Zeit zu gelangen, ist bei den nachfolgenden Übungen die Zahl der ununterbrochenen Wiederhohlungen vorgeschrieben und festgesetzt worden, in der bewährten Überzeugung, dass der Studierende hiedurch schon nach einigen Monathen zu einem Grade von Fertigkeit gelangt, den er sonst auf gewöhnlichem Wege kaum in eben so vielen Jahren erreichen würde: -- ein Gewinnst, der dieser Mühe und Hingebung wohl werth ist. Übrigens bleibt es natürlicherweise doch auch der Überlegung und Ausdauer des Spielers überlassen, in weifern er die Zahl dieser Wiederhohlungen abkürzen, oder allenfalls manchmal noch vermehren will. Der Verfasser ist der Meinung, dass man sich täglich ungefähr eine Stunde mit diesen Übungen beschäftigen soll. Dass übrigens Jeder, welcher dieses Werk vornimmt, bereits eine gute Schule, und Fertigkeit im Lesen haben muss, bedarf wohl keiner Erinnerung.
(Google translate is helpful for rusty German!)
Just to add, the 'difficulty' (Schwierigkeit) of the impossibly large number of notes in the final bar that Noorduin points out in his Ex. 1 is fully dealt with by CzernyPart III of his Pianoforte School in his chapters "On occasional changes in the time or degree of Movement" and "On playing Embellishments". In such situations a ritardando is both allowable and necessary.
Fiiiiiiiiuurssst
How do you do it!!
Laaaaaaaassst (not really.
@@surgeeo1406 this time it was luck. I got the recommendation a few seconds after the upload. 😂😂
The "impossible" rendering around 12:40 sounds like an average rendition of Chopin's double thirds etude. I can't play either, of course, and I'm not sure how the fingerings of the Czerny might complicate things, but it doesn't sound outlandishly fast to my ear.
I'd argue that the parallel sixths are the big difficulty, not the parallel thirds.
@@teodorlontos3294 If you look closely you'll see that there are no parallell sixths, but
alternating sixths and fifths or thirds and octaves. It's very fast but also very well written pianistically.
@@olofstroander7745You're correct, I skimmed the sheet music a bit too fast!
@@teodorlontos3294 It happens :)
53:34 - still listening and loving it.
Maybe Czerny was a pervert? Enjoying his position as a piano-guru and intimate of Beethoven to satisfy his sadistic pleasures?
Maybe someone should publish an article on that aspect and let it peer-review by psychiatrists.
Don't forget to enjoy the music in the meantime!
And all the other teachers using his music on their students were also perverts. For decades and centuries. Even I had to play Czerny (as a child) in the late 20th century. My teacher showed no ambition for me to reach the metronome mark in single beat...
Demisemiquavers are 32nd notes right?
These video intros are splendid!😅
48:57 still listening. Thank you for these videos. ❤
In the 1970s, Toffler's book "Future Shock" claimed that the playing of music tempo is actually speeding up (and getting faster), through the centuries. Am I correct that the viewpoint here works to debunk that claim?
no, that is exactly right, throughout times, as with everything, music got played faster and faster, and that evolution is still ongoing. That is partly the reason why there is so much resistance against an idea that , if only logically, makes so much sense.
Around 44:20 you called for people to mention if they're still listening. I have good news for you Wim: I was listening at that point, and listened to the rest as well.
I have a few observations to make:
- All the fragments that you showed had one theme in common, no dynamics in the playing that I could hear whatsoever.
- This is pure speculation and more than a little bit provocative, but one can wonder if Mr Noorduin did realise the points that you have been making for years re the historic use of the metronome by several composers including Czerny, but was coerced by the academic establishment into reaching/publishing the conclusion that he did.
On a final note, I'm really looking forward to the book, the database, the course on notation, AND Beethoven's complete keyboard works... but I have a sneaky suspicion you're aware of that already.
Watched the whole video. :) I have to say that I'm not entirely convinced of the whole beat theory, but I do agree completely that there is a serious problem to be solved. Whether whole beat is the solution - I don't know, but I don't have a better one.
One difficulty with whole beat that I can't see a way to dismiss is how it applies to triple time signatures, 3/4, 6/8 etc. For instance if the mm says dotted half = 108 (like Beethoven Symphony 1 scherzo), the whole beat theory says that every other click of the metronome would happen in the middle of the bar, on the "and" of the second quarter. That seems... unlikely. Why would it occur to anyone to have the metronome making noise in a way that distracts from the actual metrical pulse? It's quite a mental process to go from a metronome clicking in dotted quarters to figuring out how fast the quarters need to go. It seems so unnecessarily difficult that it's hard for me to believe that it was the accepted practice.
This may be something you've addressed in another video somewhere, but if so, I haven't seen it. In any case, many thanks for your passionate and incredibly thought-provoking videos.
He has talked about that in some videos. The one on my mind right now is one of the moonlight sonata videos, I'd recommend you check it out
The tradition of the Tactus inequaelis was alive and well during the XIXth,
@@AlbertoSegovia. Hmm. I watched th-cam.com/video/NHq0KjwfthU/w-d-xo.html which talks about this. It seems that Wim is saying that in the case of triple meters, a solution (a common solution? only when needed? not sure) is to do the math to make the metronome tick the smaller beat (8th in 6/8 etc.); in other words, to change over to single beat as far as how the metronome is used. A couple of things seem odd to me about this. Why require this (admittedly small) amount of math, just to make the metronome mark usable in practice? And wouldn't someone have documented this somewhere as a necessary or useful expedient? Maybe there is documentation of this somewhere; if there is, it would be a very strong corroboration for whole beat. If it isn't documented anywhere, to me it leaves questions hanging in the air.
The 'wholebeat' answer to the problem is 'tactus inaequalis'. This is a reference to the late renaissance method of beating time with down and up movements of the hand (or foot). The semibreve (whole note) was the basis. When it was divided into two (binary), the beat was equal (tactus aequalis) the hand went down and up in two equal movements. When it was divided into three (ternary), the two hand movements were unequal (tactus inaequalis); down for a count of two, up for a count of one.
This method was already being superseded by the end of the seventeenth century by the modern method of beating time, one hand (or arm) movement for each beat of the bar. By the early nineteenth century, the renaissance tactus was virtually obsolete.
The metronome, and its predecessor the pendulum, were by definition not able to reproduce tactus inaequalis. The movements of the pendulum arm, and the ticks, are always equal. So tactus inaequalis is no explanation of the 'wholebeat' definition for dotted notes. The only 'wholebeat' explanation that would make sense is that, since the metronome gives two ticks for a binary beat, it should give three ticks for a ternary beat. But as far as I know, that is not the 'wholebeat' doctrine.
@@DismasZelenka Well, yes. As far as I can see, even on Wim's account (where he acknowledges that in fast 6/8, he had to do the math to make it possible to use the metronome in single-beat fashion), the whole beat theory simply doesn't make sense for fast triple meters. And if you have to essentially abandon whole beat in a case as common as a fast triple meter, how credible is it that whole beat was used in general? As I mentioned, if that were the case, I'd expect that someone, somewhere, would have documented this important exception to the whole beat doctrine. If there is such documentation, then that's a big plus for whole beat. But if there isn't, IMO it casts important doubts on the theory.
Is this a reupload?
Bach for minions? Servile dependents? Subordinates? Favored darlings?
I was puzzled, until I looked up 'minion modern slang' and discovered it is a technical term in video gaming.
Why should a channel dealing with serious matters of musical performance history use a tag to attract gamers? Just asking.
But you have nothing to do in life? Just asking
@@endosangav7693 Just interested in language and curious! It didn't take me long.
Gamers would take issue with their art being taken lightly. However, I'm thinking Wim is alluding to the animated characters called minions, which speak a fast, gibberish language. They would probably approve of and appreciate the cartoonish sounds of single-beat honestly applied.
@@PabloMelendez1969 Thanks for the explanation. I don't disparage gamers at all - I recognize that it is a new and valid art form - but I am now rather too old to get into it!
44:32 here again
44:16, still here. I wasn't familiar with "andantino con molto" so I had to look it up. Like walking speed, with motion. Not jogging, not running, not sprinting, it's walking speed.
45:00 I am still here
44:19 still here