My jaw drops. Your presentation is absolutely brilliant, and I, and others, must be necessity, view it more than once to absorb all of your points. However, something occurs to me. I remember in one video that Glenn Gould made, while he was in Russia, when he heard Richter play a Schubert Sonata extremely slowly. At first, he was discomfited, but then he said he came to like the way Richter played it because Richter's slower playing revealed so many nuances in the music that were otherwise missed. Can you comment on this? Can you check out this video? I wonder what you think for it takes the opposite tack that yours does. I do applaud you and am persuaded by your arguments, but still . . .
I have been following you for years and I am now truly convinced that who does not understand it after this video will never do it. Starting from now it will just be denying the evidence and taking responsibility for it... Thanks Wim for the wonderful presentation and for your excellent work!
Thanks! You gave me back my self esteem to go back and practice my chopin concerto... Im sure every student would have doubted the impossible tempo prescribed.😢
Moscheles was right to humbly wonder if it is due to 'getting older' and I sometimes wonder the same thing at 70. When I internally hear a piece of music, the tempo is usually a lot slower than in most performances. Not only with 'romantic' music, but also a performance of e.g. Bartok seems overly fast to me. When I was ten, my grandfather introduced me to music through his record collection. These old performances, which are etched into my brain, were a lot slower than what we hear now. Just now while driving home I heard a keyboard piece by Haydn on radio Continuo and immediately turned it off because of the ridiculous tempo. I would love to hear, even for once, a Mozart opera in the actual tempi, but alas... only one consolation: the CD box is on its way!
As I have said in the past, you are correct. Unfortunately so many just don't want to except the facts. You are an extraordinary individual and one day your work will be mainstream.
But there were Franz Liszt's students who played at the modern tempo and we have it on recordings. One of them is Moriz Rosenthal. Also there was a pianist Alfred Cortot who was a pupil of Emile Decombes who was the pupil of Frederick Chopin, and he too plays very fast. And also there is a 1919 performance of the Hungarian Rhapsody by Sergei Rachmaninoff who was a pupil of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and it is too very-very fast. But your points are valid.
We've been through those arguments before, long ago answered and do nothing to refute the arguments made from the metronome markings left by composers and many written texts, letters, etc. If Wim and his colleagues weren't so busy I'd suggest he post play-lists where he answers the claims such as the ones you raise, yet again. I think he could probably come up with a playlist for each such point which he answered multiple times already.
Moriz Rosenthal goes into great detail describing the increase in tempo and his own experience playing for Liszt. Rosenthal played the Don Juan Fantasy for Liszt and Liszt commented on the amazing speed Rosenthal utillized. Rosenthal then said that if he played it at that same speed in the 1930s, that people would think Rosenthal had lost his technique. It's in Moriz Rosenthal In Word and Music by Mark Mitchell & Allan Evans.
It is the same Rosenthal that said in an interview in 1924 the students of Liszt would have to practice 4x as much to even enter the conservatories in 1924 (a century ago!) and that Liszt would simply be amazed at the speeds the 1924 generation of pianists had. I believe I mentioned that source in this video: ruclips.net/video/atewP-pkxjY/видео.html
Although I wouldn't consider myself a believer in the whole beat theory, I am open to hearing more about it and still watch your videos on it nonetheless :), however I have a few questions about it that I'm curious if you had an explanation for: 1. How would operas have worked in whole beat? Would everyone have just acted at half (of "modern") speed too? Halving the tempo of the music (and in turn the acting) would have made the action on stage seem unnaturally slow and lethargic. Also some of them would have to have been upwards of 8 hours long in whole beat, which seems ridiculous to me. (Although I have no idea how life was back then so I could be completely wrong about this, and people WOULD have gone to the opera for 8+ hours) 2. I've always been under the impression that metronome marks show how many times the indicated note value would appear in one minute of music. You may have previously addressed this in a video, but I have never seen you do so. If this is the case (and, once again, I'm not as much of a metronome scholar as you are so I'm not entirely sure if the whole "BPM" thing was the original intent of its use), it seems as though the whole beat theory would be implausible, as we would have a concrete unit of time to compare it to ("seconds" as opposed to semi-arbitrary "beats"/"clicks") 3. If the whole beat metronome theory is correct, when did we as musicians suddenly decide to start playing everything at double speed? It seems ridiculous that one day, everybody would have just started playing music twice as fast. Even if it was a less abrupt transition (much more likely - I was exaggerating a bit), I'm still confused as to how something THAT drastic could have happened on this large of a scale without SOMEBODY mentioning it. "Hey, isn't it weird that everybody plays music twice as fast now?" or that sort of thing.
it is extremely interesting, but no one mentions a factor of capital importance: a hammerclavier of the time compared with the modern concert piano is the same thing as the voice of Juan Diego Florez comparez With the voice of Mario di Monaco. You can ask Florez for the most agile coloraturas, but ask Di Monaco for power....The modern concert piano is built to be able to pass through the orchestra in piano concerts ....
Please do an episode on Beethovens's 1808 Vienna concert in which he premiered his 5th and 6th Symphonies along with his 4th Piano Concerto and Choral Fantasy and some smaller works. The evening lasted for about four hours from 6:30 to 10:30. It would be interesting to see how fast or slow he had the works performed.
Just what I have felt for decades. I play myself more slowly than what I usually hear just because the music becomes more beautiful. Exactly as you say I like to linger over the harmonies and, for example in Chopin, hear the details of the fioritura. Especially on the piano which is essentially percussive, in the first fraction of a second you have a messy mix of harmonics, then you get the purer tone. I want to get to a singing tone that needs the period of clean resonance. Thank you so much for this. I have been playing piano for nearly 80 years and you have given me a new lease of piano playing life. I was a professional scientist but did play in public in the past and though people liked what I did I always felt a slight guilt for not playing faster.
A few excerts from a letter from Mozart included in P Badura Skoda book : quote from Mozart, before the dinner, Vogler killed my concerto as he played the fisrt movement (allegro) as a prestissimo, the second one (andante) as an allegro and the rondo even more prestissimo.......it is impssible to play the music at such a tempo , For me this kind of reading is just garbage. The listeners, those who deserve this title, can only say that he SAW someone play some music on a piano. I almost told him WAY TO FAST !,,,, it is so much easier to plaby faster than slower. End of Mozart quot. This letter is much more longer and can be found in the book ; the art of playing Mozart by PBK. It is similar to a remark by Liszt to one of his student : You do not know this piece enough to play it at a slow tempo.
This is why new classical music compositions died, the incorrect speed played created musicians who had to spend all their time learning old music at impossible speeds rather than learning how to compose music from the masters.
That's the impression you get when you consider he had the same standards of speed in mind as we do today. It changes when you adapt to his standards. And bt: why would he joke in a letter to Breitkopf, one of the most important publishers of his time (and still today)?
If I recall, it's in Alexander Siloti's memoirs of Liszt that Liszt made fun of the conservatories by stating something along the lines of, "...they think if the notes on the page are printed small, you have to play them fast."
So what’s the secret of Liszt‘s unique technique? Could anyone explain it to me…. That the tempi are generally misunderstood and actually he never played that fast and virtuosic? or is it more or less a clickbait title?
the secret is that his incredible playing and reputation wasn't based on what we blieve if was. No clickbait at all - the video promises a 100% on the title/thumbnail but indeed triggers some questions
The channel's always been dramatic about tempi issues, and drama works. There're indeed many garbage fast tempo marks, and this channel mentioned. But there are times I get some garbage slow tempi advices here (Chopin's op10 no1 in 108 for the f real?) As long as you judge with your ears and pianism, you won't go far off.
Sadly, Maezel's description of the metronome in his patent only specifies the mechanics of the invention, not how it should be read (as far as I can tell, because I could hardly understand the periods english).
the patent speaks about the functionality of the device, it is indeed setup in a way to give x ticks per minute. the way these ticks are used however is something else. See for instance also the video i made on the Maelzel directions
Putting aside the discussion of historical tempo, to anyone reading this comment: when you listen to modern recordings of the Mendelssohn piano concerto no. 1, third movement, do you think it is usually played a little too fast or just right?
I've always had a great deal of difficulties warming up to Mendelssohn's piano concertos. I'd always chucked it up to balance since much of the piano seems to get drowned out by the orchestra in the finale. I remember Andre Watts really banging out the ending so I actually heard what the piano was doing. I bought Stephen Hough's complete Mendelssohn for piano & Orchestra. Nothing bad about it as far as I could tell but I put it away and rarely listen to it. I'd love to hear a slower version and see if more could be revealed. Same Mendelssohn in general, and maybe Moscheles and Weber in slower tempo would carry over better.
@@gerry30 I would definately love to hear a slower version. But one thing is for sure, the general public really really likes those fast interpretations, just read the comment section on the videos.😅
I love your vids. One thing I'm curious about; when did the beat change to what we know now? Liszt taught long enough that his pupils like Frederic Lamond were recorded and whose interpretations of Beethoven were regarded as the pretty much the gold standard before Schnabel. i remember hearing a recording of a radio broadcast which included his reminiscences of playing for Liszt and I'm sure his "audition" for the great man was one of the later sonatas (the Hammerklavier maybe). Lamond talks about Liszt with a kind of awe that suggests that anything he said was absorbed (I think Lamond was 17 when he went to Weimar). Yet Lamond's recordings are not so different tempo-wise from what we have grown accustomed to. Is it just that speeds were adjusted for 78 disc capacities? I would be really interested to hear what you think.
When the discriminating listener goes to a performance of classical music, usually he is more interested in hearing the ideas of the composer than he is watching a display of unteneble speed. That section of the 8th symphony digitally sped up to the tempo markings sounds utterly ridiculous. There is no room for harmonies to sound off and resonate. Beethoven loved chords. There is no way he would want that section of the 8th symphony mocked and trivialiized in such a manner! I agree with you. that those metronome markings have to be interpreted differently and it makes perfect sense that the tok would divide the beat and "Tik"would be on the beat. Since the metronome is only for practice, it helps one's precision to hear the beat divided.
Hi I really appreciate your Videos. Recently I discovered the channel of Bernhard Ruchti, a Swiss pianist who plays famous works in much slower tempi. Works as Beethoven’s op. 106, Liszt’s b-minor Sonata and Chopin’s etudes op. 10. The effect is really fascinating and worth having a look. There are three aspects or questions I want to write about here: First: Your examples are very convincing but as far as I have seen your Videos you concentrate on the pieces with too many notes for too less time. What about the slow movements or adagios? For example, the 3rd Movement of the Hammerklavier. Half the given tempo seems much too slow for me. Or worded differently: what about the metronome marks who aren’t as controversial as Hammerklavier movement one or Czerny’s op. 299? Maybe it would be worth to have a look and make a Video about those. Second, related to the first: what about vocal music? In piano music there is a limit of how fast one can play. In vocal music there is a limit of how slow you can perform a piece. Did you ever analyse any songs with metronome marks of that period? Third, related to the second: what about baroque music? The arias or choral fugues of Bach are a good indication for how fast they played their music at those times. Have you ever related the baroque tempi to the tempi of the Wiener Klassik? There should be a line from JS Bach via CPE Bach to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. And a last annotation: you always point out very explicitly that physicists count pendulums still (you emphasize the word ‘still’) as ‘whole beats’. That will _never_ change because the period of an oscillation ends when a motion exactly repeats itself. This is logical. And that leads to the greatest problem I have with the whole beat hypothesis: logically it doesn’t make sense! Why should the musicians at that time have used the metronome in such a weird way? If the metronome is set to the mark 60 it does 60 ticks per minute. If the score says quarters equals 60 than that means 60 quarters per minute. Why should it mean 30 quarters per minute? So I am not yet convinced that the whole beat hypothesis is the definite answer to the absurd metronome markings of that era 😊
Replying to your last question, the reason why each note value needs two ticks is practical. If you're a musician, playing in a small ensemble, and the music begins with everyone playing the first note together, then one musician is assigned to lead the group. He does so by moving any part of his body, be it one of his hands, his head, or the arm of his instrument, down, up, and then down again. Every down is a beat, and the up informs where the half of the beat is, so the group can feel when exactly to hit the note. Also, physiologically, we don't listen to a series of ticks as being all the same. We hear a tick, tack, tick, tack, even when the sound is actually similar. So, musicians would hear the metronome as a tick-tack, and associate it to the up-down of every beat of music.
@@surgeeo1406 Thanks for your answer! I am a musician as well even if no professional. In all ensembles I have played up today we ‘counted’ 3 4 | 1… (in 4/4) But fair enough, I am no professional, so I guess you are right. So I have some follow up questions :-) First: Why than note quarters = 60 and not quavers = 60 (in 4/4)? (At least the ticks of the metronome represent quavers) Second: Why did the usage of the metronome change in the first place? If it is so natural as you write, why don’t professional musicians use the metronome in exact that way? Additionally, I want to mention some things I thought about after I wrote my initial comment. Mozart. In my opinion, the music of Mozart is very unforgiving regarding tempo. His themes are so natural I find it very hard to imagine, that Mozart played them much slower than we do today (e.g. 3rd movement of KV 333). That’s also true for Mozart’s operas. My guess would be, that the countless paraphrases of operas at that time were played in an adequate tempo to the sung arias to maintain their character (sorry for my bad english, I hope my writing is understandable). Or Schubert’s Songs. Liszt transcribed a lot for piano. How fast did they sing Schubert’s erlking? Or his Ave Maria? I would guess that Liszts transcriptions were made to match the tempo of singing.
The correct speed of music in terms of metronome marks at the time of Beethoven has been revealed in a brilliant paper by Almudena Martin Castro and Iñaki Ucar "Conductors' tempo choices shed light over Beethoven metronome" published in 2020. The explanation is simple, I quote: "by convention, the moving weight of the metronome must be placed below the mark it is meant to produce. Unfortunately, in the first metronomes, this weight was 15 mm high and had a triangular shape pointing downwards. This could have led its users to read the metronome mark below the moving weight, instead of above... Beethoven marks would have resulted faster than he actually intended". A revealing inscription by Beethoven himself is written in the first page of his autograph of the 9th Symphony where he indicates "108 or 120 Maelzel", that is reading above or below de metronome weight. Using the same concept the speed by Katsaris (56) is the number you read above the weight of the metronome when the number below is... 84. Question solved!
Basically they say that Beethoven was too stupid to operate a metronome. And secondly their 'genius' found was copy/paste from a ca. 1970ish publication of Peter Stadlen. #sofarforpeerreviews
I have a mechanical Seth Thomas metronome from about 1965. The top of the weight lines up perfectly with the numbers. The bottom of the weight does not. I wonder how it is on metronomes of the period. The organ works of Vierne are sometimes commented as having too fast mm markings and that he was reading the bottom of the weight. I think Wim discussed this once.
17 notes per second is impossible. Even in scales. It could be done in a glissando. It certainly couldn't be on a repeated note. I can play scales at 13 notes per second maximum, and I can't sustain it for a long time, and it's a feather-light sound. Honestly 10-12 notes per second is not comfortable for any pianist. Well, perhaps for some, perhaps *if* the piano is in absolutely perfect condition and the pianist is having a good day. It's difficult at those speeds to get any control. The average first-year music college student is not a virtuoso, and can't reach those speeds (10 to 12 notes per second) very easily. Never mind 17 notes per second.
I'm not convinced the hammer even returns to a strike-able position quickly enough to achieve much faster than 13-14 repeated notes per second (unless you play ridiculously light and then you're obviously not playing it as written). 17 is insane. We also have no objective record of how perfectly they played at these higher speeds (as it's too fast to be able to just trust someone's senses there could be all kinds of flaws which weren't noticed by the listener at the time such as disrespectfully tremoloing some patterns instead of playing them literally note-for-note).
Great talk. Reminds me of Celibidache. He usually said that music must be played in a way that the listener has time to hear and "understand" a note before the next one is played because both are part of a "string" that is the melody, or the statement. I tend to agree with him specially when playing Bruckner but with Brahms it seems to me just too slow and lacking the drama. Beethoven's 8th last movement sounds great at 84 in an orchestra (a very good one) but sounds ridiculous in a piano, even someone could play it that fast, not mentioning 30% faster! And to be played "on sight" by a first year piano student...well, either Liszt was a joker or the metronomes were very different in his time.
Liszt's words about his transcriptions of the Beethoven Symphonies that "... the pupils of the first classl in Conservatoires will be able to play them off fairly well on reading them at sight...." says it all. And then Katsaris, after 10 years of practice, not recording them at the "indicated" metronome marks by a substantial percentage, and then the laughable result when the recordings are speed up digitally to the metronome marks, is the kind of evidence that is foolish to argue with. Great work Wim!
Always amused about people who are still not convinced by whole beat. We are presented with a problem through many many many empirical examples. Of compositions that are sped up to the correct ‘ single beat tempo’. With lots of historical quotes about the speeding up of tempo during the 19th century and how the metronome marks were considered relatively easy or sight readable. Then the only question should be. Is this tempo in single beat humanly possible and does it actually sound like music? Only conclusion is…no it’s not possible and it sounds cartoonish and ridiculous. Then any discussion should start from this premise. Not from …’but we have students from Listz who played at x tempo’ or ‘it would sound too slow in whole beat’. Listen and use your critical and logical thinking skills. Don’t let your indoctrinated modern musical preconceived notions cloud them.
Speed / Geschwindigkeit : => Die erste öffentliche Eisenbahn war die 1825 eröffnete Stockton and Darlington Railway in England, die neben Gütern zum ersten Mal auch Personen beförderte. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ab diesem Moment beginnt die moderne Geschwindigkeits-Zeit ..... sie hat dann ihren verheerenden Einfluss auf die Musik!
Naja, wir haben Wagner, Liszt, Brahms und Mahler geschenkt bekommen, Caruso, Horowitz und Melchior haben die Konzertsäle begeistert und viele weitere werden folgen.
My jaw drops. Your presentation is absolutely brilliant, and I, and others, must be necessity, view it more than once to absorb all of your points. However, something occurs to me. I remember in one video that Glenn Gould made, while he was in Russia, when he heard Richter play a Schubert Sonata extremely slowly. At first, he was discomfited, but then he said he came to like the way Richter played it because Richter's slower playing revealed so many nuances in the music that were otherwise missed. Can you comment on this? Can you check out this video? I wonder what you think for it takes the opposite tack that yours does. I do applaud you and am persuaded by your arguments, but still . . .
thank you :-). I made a video about the Richter-Schubert/Gould story, you can find it here: ruclips.net/video/QW1fRLLdEK8/видео.html
I have been following you for years and I am now truly convinced that who does not understand it after this video will never do it. Starting from now it will just be denying the evidence and taking responsibility for it... Thanks Wim for the wonderful presentation and for your excellent work!
Thanks! You gave me back my self esteem to go back and practice my chopin concerto... Im sure every student would have doubted the impossible tempo prescribed.😢
Moscheles was right to humbly wonder if it is due to 'getting older' and I sometimes wonder the same thing at 70. When I internally hear a piece of music, the tempo is usually a lot slower than in most performances. Not only with 'romantic' music, but also a performance of e.g. Bartok seems overly fast to me. When I was ten, my grandfather introduced me to music through his record collection. These old performances, which are etched into my brain, were a lot slower than what we hear now. Just now while driving home I heard a keyboard piece by Haydn on radio Continuo and immediately turned it off because of the ridiculous tempo. I would love to hear, even for once, a Mozart opera in the actual tempi, but alas... only one consolation: the CD box is on its way!
Yaaay! Hopeful for more Liszt content.
As I have said in the past, you are correct. Unfortunately so many just don't want to except the facts. You are an extraordinary individual and one day your work will be mainstream.
But there were Franz Liszt's students who played at the modern tempo and we have it on recordings. One of them is Moriz Rosenthal. Also there was a pianist Alfred Cortot who was a pupil of Emile Decombes who was the pupil of Frederick Chopin, and he too plays very fast. And also there is a 1919 performance of the Hungarian Rhapsody by Sergei Rachmaninoff who was a pupil of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and it is too very-very fast. But your points are valid.
We've been through those arguments before, long ago answered and do nothing to refute the arguments made from the metronome markings left by composers and many written texts, letters, etc. If Wim and his colleagues weren't so busy I'd suggest he post play-lists where he answers the claims such as the ones you raise, yet again. I think he could probably come up with a playlist for each such point which he answered multiple times already.
Moriz Rosenthal goes into great detail describing the increase in tempo and his own experience playing for Liszt. Rosenthal played the Don Juan Fantasy for Liszt and Liszt commented on the amazing speed Rosenthal utillized. Rosenthal then said that if he played it at that same speed in the 1930s, that people would think Rosenthal had lost his technique. It's in Moriz Rosenthal In Word and Music by Mark Mitchell & Allan Evans.
Tell me…how is this not relevant?
Even in Liszt's own time, he has said that "students" came to him and played HIS own works FASTER than he could have ever imagined them going.
It is the same Rosenthal that said in an interview in 1924 the students of Liszt would have to practice 4x as much to even enter the conservatories in 1924 (a century ago!) and that Liszt would simply be amazed at the speeds the 1924 generation of pianists had. I believe I mentioned that source in this video: ruclips.net/video/atewP-pkxjY/видео.html
Although I wouldn't consider myself a believer in the whole beat theory, I am open to hearing more about it and still watch your videos on it nonetheless :), however I have a few questions about it that I'm curious if you had an explanation for:
1. How would operas have worked in whole beat? Would everyone have just acted at half (of "modern") speed too? Halving the tempo of the music (and in turn the acting) would have made the action on stage seem unnaturally slow and lethargic. Also some of them would have to have been upwards of 8 hours long in whole beat, which seems ridiculous to me. (Although I have no idea how life was back then so I could be completely wrong about this, and people WOULD have gone to the opera for 8+ hours)
2. I've always been under the impression that metronome marks show how many times the indicated note value would appear in one minute of music. You may have previously addressed this in a video, but I have never seen you do so. If this is the case (and, once again, I'm not as much of a metronome scholar as you are so I'm not entirely sure if the whole "BPM" thing was the original intent of its use), it seems as though the whole beat theory would be implausible, as we would have a concrete unit of time to compare it to ("seconds" as opposed to semi-arbitrary "beats"/"clicks")
3. If the whole beat metronome theory is correct, when did we as musicians suddenly decide to start playing everything at double speed? It seems ridiculous that one day, everybody would have just started playing music twice as fast. Even if it was a less abrupt transition (much more likely - I was exaggerating a bit), I'm still confused as to how something THAT drastic could have happened on this large of a scale without SOMEBODY mentioning it. "Hey, isn't it weird that everybody plays music twice as fast now?" or that sort of thing.
Another great video. Bravo. When did composers stop using whole beat ? Early 20th century ?
I have to add, I'm always impressed by Wim's facility with many languages.
Wish my English was better though... but thanks!
Muchas gracias !!! Como pianista me haces reflexiónar sobre muchas cosas que daba por hecho.
it is extremely interesting, but no one mentions a factor of capital importance: a hammerclavier of the time compared with the modern concert piano is the same thing as the voice of Juan Diego Florez comparez With the voice of Mario di Monaco. You can ask Florez for the most agile coloraturas, but ask Di Monaco for power....The modern concert piano is built to be able to pass through the orchestra in piano concerts ....
Wim, never change. Keep charging unto the windmills and eventually you will be remembered as the one that saw it before anyone else
14:17
Please do an episode on Beethovens's 1808 Vienna concert in which he premiered his 5th and 6th Symphonies along with his 4th Piano Concerto and Choral Fantasy and some smaller works. The evening lasted for about four hours from 6:30 to 10:30. It would be interesting to see how fast or slow he had the works performed.
i made that video few years ago: ruclips.net/video/gsntpykv1jQ/видео.html
I have always thought that a piano transcription should usually be slower than the orchestral version.
Just what I have felt for decades. I play myself more slowly than what I usually hear just because the music becomes more beautiful. Exactly as you say I like to linger over the harmonies and, for example in Chopin, hear the details of the fioritura. Especially on the piano which is essentially percussive, in the first fraction of a second you have a messy mix of harmonics, then you get the purer tone. I want to get to a singing tone that needs the period of clean resonance. Thank you so much for this. I have been playing piano for nearly 80 years and you have given me a new lease of piano playing life. I was a professional scientist but did play in public in the past and though people liked what I did I always felt a slight guilt for not playing faster.
It is depressing knowing, according to single beat, that I will never be able to play at a level of a STUDENT 150 years ago.
Great Video Wim!
A few excerts from a letter from Mozart included in P Badura Skoda book : quote from Mozart, before the dinner, Vogler killed my concerto as he played the fisrt movement (allegro) as a prestissimo, the second one (andante) as an allegro and the rondo even more prestissimo.......it is impssible to play the music at such a tempo , For me this kind of reading is just garbage. The listeners, those who deserve this title, can only say that he SAW someone play some music on a piano. I almost told him WAY TO FAST !,,,, it is so much easier to plaby faster than slower. End of Mozart quot. This letter is much more longer and can be found in the book ; the art of playing Mozart by PBK. It is similar to a remark by Liszt to one of his student : You do not know this piece enough to play it at a slow tempo.
I believe the title of the book that you refer to is "Interpreting Mozart on the Keyboard" by Paul and Eva Badura-Skoda.
This is why new classical music compositions died, the incorrect speed played created musicians who had to spend all their time learning old music at impossible speeds rather than learning how to compose music from the masters.
maybe liszt was joking about the conservatory thing, he was known for being quite funny and charming
He was joking and not joking at the same time. Remember, he was not accepted into conservatory...then became what he became.
That's the impression you get when you consider he had the same standards of speed in mind as we do today. It changes when you adapt to his standards. And bt: why would he joke in a letter to Breitkopf, one of the most important publishers of his time (and still today)?
If I recall, it's in Alexander Siloti's memoirs of Liszt that Liszt made fun of the conservatories by stating something along the lines of, "...they think if the notes on the page are printed small, you have to play them fast."
Great video, as always, very clear, to the point, no doubt 🥰
So what’s the secret of Liszt‘s unique technique? Could anyone explain it to me…. That the tempi are generally misunderstood and actually he never played that fast and virtuosic? or is it more or less a clickbait title?
Clickbait.
the secret is that his incredible playing and reputation wasn't based on what we blieve if was. No clickbait at all - the video promises a 100% on the title/thumbnail but indeed triggers some questions
The channel's always been dramatic about tempi issues, and drama works. There're indeed many garbage fast tempo marks, and this channel mentioned. But there are times I get some garbage slow tempi advices here (Chopin's op10 no1 in 108 for the f real?) As long as you judge with your ears and pianism, you won't go far off.
Sadly, Maezel's description of the metronome in his patent only specifies the mechanics of the invention, not how it should be read (as far as I can tell, because I could hardly understand the periods english).
the patent speaks about the functionality of the device, it is indeed setup in a way to give x ticks per minute. the way these ticks are used however is something else. See for instance also the video i made on the Maelzel directions
Putting aside the discussion of historical tempo, to anyone reading this comment: when you listen to modern recordings of the Mendelssohn piano concerto no. 1, third movement, do you think it is usually played a little too fast or just right?
I've always had a great deal of difficulties warming up to Mendelssohn's piano concertos. I'd always chucked it up to balance since much of the piano seems to get drowned out by the orchestra in the finale. I remember Andre Watts really banging out the ending so I actually heard what the piano was doing. I bought Stephen Hough's complete Mendelssohn for piano & Orchestra. Nothing bad about it as far as I could tell but I put it away and rarely listen to it. I'd love to hear a slower version and see if more could be revealed. Same Mendelssohn in general, and maybe Moscheles and Weber in slower tempo would carry over better.
@@gerry30 I would definately love to hear a slower version. But one thing is for sure, the general public really really likes those fast interpretations, just read the comment section on the videos.😅
I love your vids.
One thing I'm curious about; when did the beat change to what we know now? Liszt taught long enough that his pupils like Frederic Lamond were recorded and whose interpretations of Beethoven were regarded as the pretty much the gold standard before Schnabel. i remember hearing a recording of a radio broadcast which included his reminiscences of playing for Liszt and I'm sure his "audition" for the great man was one of the later sonatas (the Hammerklavier maybe). Lamond talks about Liszt with a kind of awe that suggests that anything he said was absorbed (I think Lamond was 17 when he went to Weimar).
Yet Lamond's recordings are not so different tempo-wise from what we have grown accustomed to. Is it just that speeds were adjusted for 78 disc capacities? I would be really interested to hear what you think.
It's mysterious, yes.
When the discriminating listener goes to a performance of classical music, usually he is more interested in hearing the ideas of the composer than he is watching a display of unteneble speed. That section of the 8th symphony digitally sped up to the tempo markings sounds utterly ridiculous. There is no room for harmonies to sound off and resonate. Beethoven loved chords. There is no way he would want that section of the 8th symphony mocked and trivialiized in such a manner! I agree with you. that those metronome markings have to be interpreted differently and it makes perfect sense that the tok would divide the beat and "Tik"would be on the beat. Since the metronome is only for practice, it helps one's precision to hear the beat divided.
Even if i supose the old humans are more strong than now, this is impossible to play in some speeds
Hi
I really appreciate your Videos. Recently I discovered the channel of Bernhard Ruchti, a Swiss pianist who plays famous works in much slower tempi. Works as Beethoven’s op. 106, Liszt’s b-minor Sonata and Chopin’s etudes op. 10. The effect is really fascinating and worth having a look.
There are three aspects or questions I want to write about here:
First: Your examples are very convincing but as far as I have seen your Videos you concentrate on the pieces with too many notes for too less time. What about the slow movements or adagios? For example, the 3rd Movement of the Hammerklavier. Half the given tempo seems much too slow for me. Or worded differently: what about the metronome marks who aren’t as controversial as Hammerklavier movement one or Czerny’s op. 299? Maybe it would be worth to have a look and make a Video about those.
Second, related to the first: what about vocal music? In piano music there is a limit of how fast one can play. In vocal music there is a limit of how slow you can perform a piece. Did you ever analyse any songs with metronome marks of that period?
Third, related to the second: what about baroque music? The arias or choral fugues of Bach are a good indication for how fast they played their music at those times. Have you ever related the baroque tempi to the tempi of the Wiener Klassik? There should be a line from JS Bach via CPE Bach to Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.
And a last annotation: you always point out very explicitly that physicists count pendulums still (you emphasize the word ‘still’) as ‘whole beats’. That will _never_ change because the period of an oscillation ends when a motion exactly repeats itself. This is logical. And that leads to the greatest problem I have with the whole beat hypothesis: logically it doesn’t make sense! Why should the musicians at that time have used the metronome in such a weird way? If the metronome is set to the mark 60 it does 60 ticks per minute. If the score says quarters equals 60 than that means 60 quarters per minute. Why should it mean 30 quarters per minute? So I am not yet convinced that the whole beat hypothesis is the definite answer to the absurd metronome markings of that era 😊
Replying to your last question, the reason why each note value needs two ticks is practical. If you're a musician, playing in a small ensemble, and the music begins with everyone playing the first note together, then one musician is assigned to lead the group. He does so by moving any part of his body, be it one of his hands, his head, or the arm of his instrument, down, up, and then down again. Every down is a beat, and the up informs where the half of the beat is, so the group can feel when exactly to hit the note.
Also, physiologically, we don't listen to a series of ticks as being all the same. We hear a tick, tack, tick, tack, even when the sound is actually similar.
So, musicians would hear the metronome as a tick-tack, and associate it to the up-down of every beat of music.
@@surgeeo1406 Thanks for your answer! I am a musician as well even if no professional. In all ensembles I have played up today we ‘counted’ 3 4 | 1… (in 4/4)
But fair enough, I am no professional, so I guess you are right. So I have some follow up questions :-)
First: Why than note quarters = 60 and not quavers = 60 (in 4/4)? (At least the ticks of the metronome represent quavers)
Second: Why did the usage of the metronome change in the first place? If it is so natural as you write, why don’t professional musicians use the metronome in exact that way?
Additionally, I want to mention some things I thought about after I wrote my initial comment. Mozart. In my opinion, the music of Mozart is very unforgiving regarding tempo. His themes are so natural I find it very hard to imagine, that Mozart played them much slower than we do today (e.g. 3rd movement of KV 333). That’s also true for Mozart’s operas. My guess would be, that the countless paraphrases of operas at that time were played in an adequate tempo to the sung arias to maintain their character (sorry for my bad english, I hope my writing is understandable).
Or Schubert’s Songs. Liszt transcribed a lot for piano. How fast did they sing Schubert’s erlking? Or his Ave Maria? I would guess that Liszts transcriptions were made to match the tempo of singing.
I think these arguments are very strong.
100% agree, since years. Thank you
The correct speed of music in terms of metronome marks at the time of Beethoven has been revealed in a brilliant paper by Almudena Martin Castro and Iñaki Ucar "Conductors' tempo choices shed light over Beethoven metronome" published in 2020. The explanation is simple, I quote: "by convention, the moving weight of the metronome must be placed below the mark it is meant to produce. Unfortunately, in the first metronomes, this weight was 15 mm high and had a triangular shape pointing downwards. This could have led its users to read the metronome mark below the moving weight, instead of above... Beethoven marks would have resulted faster than he actually intended". A revealing inscription by Beethoven himself is written in the first page of his autograph of the 9th Symphony where he indicates "108 or 120 Maelzel", that is reading above or below de metronome weight. Using the same concept the speed by Katsaris (56) is the number you read above the weight of the metronome when the number below is... 84. Question solved!
Basically they say that Beethoven was too stupid to operate a metronome. And secondly their 'genius' found was copy/paste from a ca. 1970ish publication of Peter Stadlen. #sofarforpeerreviews
I have a mechanical Seth Thomas metronome from about 1965. The top of the weight lines up perfectly with the numbers. The bottom of the weight does not. I wonder how it is on metronomes of the period. The organ works of Vierne are sometimes commented as having too fast mm markings and that he was reading the bottom of the weight. I think Wim discussed this once.
We just need a time machine to settle this debate!
or just look at the facts!
17 notes per second is impossible. Even in scales. It could be done in a glissando. It certainly couldn't be on a repeated note. I can play scales at 13 notes per second maximum, and I can't sustain it for a long time, and it's a feather-light sound. Honestly 10-12 notes per second is not comfortable for any pianist. Well, perhaps for some, perhaps *if* the piano is in absolutely perfect condition and the pianist is having a good day. It's difficult at those speeds to get any control. The average first-year music college student is not a virtuoso, and can't reach those speeds (10 to 12 notes per second) very easily. Never mind 17 notes per second.
I'm not convinced the hammer even returns to a strike-able position quickly enough to achieve much faster than 13-14 repeated notes per second (unless you play ridiculously light and then you're obviously not playing it as written). 17 is insane. We also have no objective record of how perfectly they played at these higher speeds (as it's too fast to be able to just trust someone's senses there could be all kinds of flaws which weren't noticed by the listener at the time such as disrespectfully tremoloing some patterns instead of playing them literally note-for-note).
@@olofstroander7745 Cos I'm not just talking about the example in the video. I'm only really thinking about the concept itself.
Great talk. Reminds me of Celibidache. He usually said that music must be played in a way that the listener has time to hear and "understand" a note before the next one is played because both are part of a "string" that is the melody, or the statement. I tend to agree with him specially when playing Bruckner but with Brahms it seems to me just too slow and lacking the drama. Beethoven's 8th last movement sounds great at 84 in an orchestra (a very good one) but sounds ridiculous in a piano, even someone could play it that fast, not mentioning 30% faster! And to be played "on sight" by a first year piano student...well, either Liszt was a joker or the metronomes were very different in his time.
Find us a recording of an orchestra playing as fast as Beethoven’s metronome mark. BAM!
That's why I play Rachmaninov 🤭 At least his metronome indications are not subject to debate 😁
Surprisingly WW said that Rachmaninoff was double beat as well.
@@minkyukim0204 it doesn't seem true, according to his recordings tempo of pieces where he put metronome marking
@@floring67 well.. tell him..
Liszt's words about his transcriptions of the Beethoven Symphonies that "... the pupils of the first classl in Conservatoires will be able to play them off fairly well on reading them at sight...." says it all. And then Katsaris, after 10 years of practice, not recording them at the "indicated" metronome marks by a substantial percentage, and then the laughable result when the recordings are speed up digitally to the metronome marks, is the kind of evidence that is foolish to argue with. Great work Wim!
Game, set, match!
Why not read Brahms in German as you did the French?
Always amused about people who are still not convinced by whole beat.
We are presented with a problem through many many many empirical examples. Of compositions that are sped up to the correct ‘ single beat tempo’. With lots of historical quotes about the speeding up of tempo during the 19th century and how the metronome marks were considered relatively easy or sight readable.
Then the only question should be. Is this tempo in single beat humanly possible and does it actually sound like music?
Only conclusion is…no it’s not possible and it sounds cartoonish and ridiculous.
Then any discussion should start from this premise.
Not from …’but we have students from Listz who played at x tempo’ or ‘it would sound too slow in whole beat’.
Listen and use your critical and logical thinking skills. Don’t let your indoctrinated modern musical preconceived notions cloud them.
The wait for the book is killing me 😖
This brings to mind Adelina de Lara's comment that speed is a dangerous thing, and much has been lost in its pursuit.
At this point, those who do not acknowledge Whole beat as a fact are idiots
Speed / Geschwindigkeit :
=> Die erste öffentliche Eisenbahn war die 1825
eröffnete Stockton and Darlington Railway in England,
die neben Gütern zum ersten Mal auch Personen beförderte.
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Ab diesem Moment beginnt die moderne Geschwindigkeits-Zeit .....
sie hat dann ihren verheerenden Einfluss auf die Musik!
Naja, wir haben Wagner, Liszt, Brahms und Mahler geschenkt bekommen, Caruso, Horowitz und Melchior haben die Konzertsäle begeistert und viele weitere werden folgen.