We Still Serve Chopin NAKED
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- Опубликовано: 1 окт 2024
- Chopin's Etude Opus.10 No.3, historically called "la Tristesse", is one of those pieces that we still play today in Whole Beat (= "Half" of the literal metronome marking". Because... we enjoy change way too much? Imagine if Chopin were to return to our time to discover that we still play only a handful of his compositions in the tempi he intended? What would he have to say to that? Please don't?
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Videos used in this video:
** • Some tempo choices “FE...
** • Tristesse - is the tit...
** • F. Chopin - Etude Op. ...
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Hm.... you are starting to get me hooked after I watched several of your videos already. Great Chopin lover here and you picked the right Etude to make me very curious. I always wondered about the 100 metronome marking for Etude 10 3, tested it myself, and thought my dear Chopin must have been out of his mind. But I know he wasn't when it came to his work, his compositions. He was fastidious, meticulous, utterly precise in his instructions (pedal!) and valued subtlety and extremely refined playing highest when it came to performance. Virtuosity was a tool for him, but not the actual art of playing piano, he had no interest in finger acrobatics. So speed wasn't his goal. From all I know about this neurotically accurate perfectionist I find it pretty impossible that he made a mistake or had a faulty metronome (which he also valued very high, he used it all the time himself and with his pupils).
Many others of his pieces sound much richer and more enigmatic when played slower. He was so inventive in harmonies and counterpoint, but so many of his great harmonies go lost in his music when played too fast, so many little subtle nuances can't be heard.
The only objection I have is that Alfred Cortot did play many of Chopin's pieces rather fast himself, and he was a student of Mikuli, who again was an important actual pupil of Chopin himself. Wouldn't have Mikuli passed on to Cortot how the metronome markings are supposed to be understood? Wouldn't he have taught him the tempi that he himself had learned from Chopin? It's just not completely logical to me.
thank you for your reflections. No, tradition want something that was passed complete, change and progress was required in those days as in fact still today or society and not really ready to do what they claim they want: look backwards to reconstruct our musical past. It would require leaving personal taste and developed new standards of technique behind. How many times people here in the chat call me an amateur. It's exactly that. That's the price one has to be willing to pay. The result however, is worth it!
An “amateur” can still have a refreshing point of view.
Chopin’s piano would not have been as rich or had as long a sustain as modern instruments. Hence contemporary pianists are able and more willing to play it slow and milk the melody regardless of Chopin’s tempo marking.
It would be interesting to know who first played/recorded it slower. Are there early recordings of it faster than today? Very possible. Horowitz takes it somewhat andante rubato.
I have played a 19th century Pleyel, and the tone is richer in timbres in the registers, clearing through out the bass (no mud of the cross-strung pianos of Steinway), not homogenized. As to volume, yes modern pianos are louder and seem to sustain longer, but of equal volume I did not have another then contempory piano next to the Pleyel for equivalent volume (relative as forte is dependent on the volume of the room, the number of people in the room (1/4-1/2-full house), dressed in winter or summer clothes, concert hall or church or parlor/apartment/large living room/recording studio). Horowitz played Trauemerei from Kinderszenen if very slightly above Whole Beat, 52 bpm=1/4...Clara Haskil 54...,Weissenberg at 48, Moiseiwitsch 54, Novaes as speed demon at 58. Schumann's MM mark 1/4=100, Clara's 80 ppm. Von Fremden laedern und Menschen, both Robert and Clara 108, Moiseiwitsch 52, & Weissenberg 48...
I don't understand how this video is relevant to the wholebeat theory at all. All this shows is that the general public has disagreed with Chopin on a handful of occasions. This has nothing to do with "wholebeat". You can listen to recordings of 20th century composers like for example Rachmaninoff, Bartok, Prokofiev, etc which are severely different than modern performances. Rachmaninoff often played some sections literally exactly twice as fast as modern pianists, he also played some sections slower than modern pianists. The general public disagreed with some of Rachmaninoffs ideas too, this has nothing to do with wholebeat. The rest is just very subjective blabbering about how playing slowly makes it easier to be expressive, which I happen to severely disagree with, and often think people play too slowly today.
How can I disagree with Chopin when I don't know his mind?
All we have is the score. It is the composers intention that we follow the score.
On tempo. When it comes to pieces played by well known pianists that I am unfamiliar with, I have the feeling that the tempo is right. It is only after several listenings of the same recording, then comparing it with others, looking at the score and also trying to play the score myself that I am aware that something feels wrong. This feeling is not subjective. If it was purely subjective then I would immediately know it was wrong the first time that I heard it. And that very rarely happens. It is own after objectifying the piece and taking it all in that I feel it is wrong.
@@he1ar1 And the score gives eighth=100, not eighth=50
They played slower than the indicated tempo simply because they don't like it, it's all about personal taste and opinion. They know how Chopin wanted it to be played, they don't have to play it in that way just because of that. Annique mentioned in the same clip u showed, that people are more used to a slower tempo so thats perhaps why she played it slower in her performance, and there's nothing wrong with that.
It's simple, Wim. These musicians were conditioned. They may have been trained to play very well, but also conditioned to not question their teachings. This is why, with the famous pianists, the most well known works always sound the same.
The thing that annoys me are the pianists that go on an on about textual fidelity and the composer's intentions and in the same breath will not hesitate to change the text or follow a tradition that isn't in the text and then praise to the highest someone of note who radically changed the text. There's no shame in experimenting but people shouldn't claim to be so devoted to the composer and then go against what the text says. I think all music played on a modern grand should have some kind of qualifier in the programs for pre-1860s era music like "Beethoven or Mozart Sonata..etc....as interpreted on a modern instrument"
Someone send this to Nahre Sol
The last eight measures from the Largo of Op. 58 contain the most nakedly beautiful utterances I have ever heard.
such a shame, only the greatest composers got cursed with a broken metronome.
yeah hahaha
I’m hoping you see this Wim. I’m relearning Chopin 2, and I looked at Mikuli’s metronome mark of 138 to the quarter for the first movement and then listened to Rubinstein’s performance with Previn. Do you know Rubinstein does it just a little faster than double beat? It doesn’t match up exactly but it’s significantly close.
Change can be scary...
I actually think Chopins tempo feels like a breath of fresh air, compared to the countless superslow, sentimental versions we always hear.
And forget about "La tristesse" - that cheesy name has nothing to do with Chopin anyway .
Yes, and while we are at it lets forget Moonlight (Mondschein) with Sonata somewhat like a Fantasia first movement (of the two so titled)
@@Renshen1957 Yes, maybe we should.
It's not from Beethoven.
@@olofstroander7745 There seems to be a number of works also "nicknamed," which became popular and the sobriquet became forever associated with the piece. J S Bach's Dorian Toccata (BWV 538) not composed in the Dorian mode, as in many if not all J S Bach's work in a minor key manuscripts omits one flat (BWV 565 also lacks the Bb written in d minor). Both Chopin and Czerny composed etudes which acquired the nickname "Butterfly". Likewise, Chopin's "Raindrop" prelude to name a few.
I definitely prefer the original Chopin tempo.
I suppose the other viewpoint would be that originally Chopin really did want the etude played at the livelier (single beat) tempo that he indicated rather than the much slower tempo that became standard . That would explain his initial indication that the piece should be played "vivace ma non troppo" . It is an etude after all. Perhaps extremes of expression like today's were not so prevalent in Chopin's day when he wrote the piece (or perhaps such extremes were considered in bad taste (schmaltzy) or, at least, not to his taste ?).
David Stanhope has a good video arguing in favor of this, it's on RUclips under the title "Chopin Godowsky Chapter 3" (I can't post the link)
@@wilh3lmmusic Thank you so much !!! I grew up listening to the slow versions of this etude (and Hungarian pop song versions of the tune from the 1930's) but Mr. Stanhope's video, which includes a performance at tempo, was a real eye opener. To me, Chopin's metronome mark makes perfect sense in single beat even though I had never heard it at that tempo before. This also makes sense because Chopin's metronome indications for his waltzes, when present, only make sense from the underlying dance music perspective in single beat so his marks are consistent. The main melody of the etude sounds beautiful played slowly as well, but somehow the etude as a unit sounds more cohesive to me at Chopin's tempo. You have gained Mr. Stanhope a new subscriber. Thanks again !
I think there is always a problem with the lentos of chopin's take mazurka op 17 no. 4 as an exemple. The metrenome marking is quarter 154 '' lento ma non troppo " but with that tempo it feels vivace and obviously chopin want it to be lento in that tempo which op 10 no. 3 and op 27 no. 2 have the same problem. And that mazurka like the etude or the nocturne played almost or even slower than wbmp ( you can't tell because of rubato) so it's either we should consider wbmp as solution (which works fine at least for me) or admitting chopin was stupid enough that he couldn't Tell what '' lento'' means without mentioning the technical difficulty of the single beat. Let me know what do you think!!
@@dorette-hi4j honestly i'm not well known with the types of mazurkas but a bar in 3/4 dotted half note = 50 maybe it's introduced as lento tempo in single beat but the description of lento means "slow" but with that tempo it's simply dosen't feels slow it's either so lively to be slow but if you use wbmp it starts feels slow as indicated . I'm talking about the contradiction between the description and the tempo indication in the case of single beat and i know some people think the same with wbmp with faster tempos like (allegro, vivace, presto) especially when someone is used to the modern prefomance practice .
At the end music is subjectif but what's unacceptable saying ''you know what we don't get chopin's faster tempos, sometimes impossible (piano concerto runs in tempo), maybe with the pianoforte you can play faster (which is not the case) or maybe chopin's metrenome was broken (really?) Anyway i'm just going to ignore them and act like there isn't a problem with those markings''
And i still enjoy modern performance and the artistic way they bring the music with an excellent technique but logically i belive wbmp to be the truth!! And musically make much more sense!!
Yeah this is a much more reasonable argument than claiming he set an impossibly high tempo as some phantom "goal" for everyone to attempt to reach (in such case, you might as well put 999 on all pieces)
In those times, life was short. They didn’t have time to waste, even sadness had to be quick…
ahahahahahaha thats true
The single beat Interpretation of the E major Etude doesn’t convey tristesse=sadness…In fact the single beat tempo MM mark sounds more in the vein of a cheerful walk with your beloved pet dog during a summer’s school of holiday morning, without a single tinge of melancholy or longing.
You might want to download the Duck Duck Go Browser and used their player if and when you want to hear something uninterrupted, but do not want to comment.
Dear Wim! I've just bought the full experience Beethoven box. I wholeheartedly support your project. Not only your arguments make perfect sense, but also the music is so much easier on the ears and more pleasant to experience. The 9th is so much more majestic and profound! There is space and time to breathe and think and feel. I hope you have already made a great contribution to musicology and history of music itself. I wish you and your team much success. Please continue your mission. My very best and warm regards from Leipzig!
I hope you get out of this terrible delusion, wish you luck.
@@letsbrawl945 I happen to have started learning to play piano one year ago and I am learning on Czerny etudes. The argument that the single beat speed is not attainable makes perfect sense. And even if there is some miracle reason for people in 19th c. being able to play faster than physically possible - I don't like when music turns into an acrobatic circus show. The 9th. makes aesthetically perfect sense for me when played slower. I like it.
@@ihspan6892 If you think some Czerny etudes are too fast in single beat, sure, I can't argue against that. But please, don't mindlessly just follow everything Wim says and just think that the entirety of classical music was so slow. There come so many problems with the whole beat theory and it lacks way too much proof to be a standard way of interpreting stuff. There isn't even a source talking about any change of counting with the metronome, which already drops the rates of whole beat being real drastically.
@@ihspan6892 Also, ''single beat speed is not attainable'' is just not true for like 99.9% of classical pieces.
@dorette-hi4j This is very true. Also, we cannot use wholebeat as a standard of performance like letsbrawl said, simply because there's no proof of its authenticity at all. Wim claims people in the 19th century played in wholebeat, which's infact not true. In Alan Walker's book "Refleftions on Liszt", he states that Liszt recommended tempo Quaver=84 for the Adagio of Hammerklavier, Liszt's student Felix Weingratner recommends Quaver = 80, and in that pace the movement lasts 20 minutes or more. Its literally stated like that in the book, there's no way you can claim people in the 1800s played half the tempo we do, especially since we have recordings nowadays for Liszt's pupils for example who play on the same pace we do nowadays, and even some great pianists like Elly Ney (studied with Emil Von Sauer who was a pupil of Liszt) recorded the Adagio and her performance of it was 18 minutes. I think thats enough information to debunk wholebeat, ignoring the fact theres no sources to back it up, or the fact it doesnt even make sense.
I appreciate you bringing Greg Niemczuk into this. A very underrated Chopin interpreter.
Hi Wim, do you think it is possible that WBMP applies to Chopin but maybe only early Chopin? Correct me if i'm wrong but later Chopin metronome marks seem more logical from a single-beat perspective then his early ones. His Polonaise brillante seems pretty logical from a single-beat perspective as an example.
The tempo of a Polonaise should be moderate, so a SB MM would negate this.
The polonaise in op. 22 has MM quarter = 96, exactly the same tempo for the Alla Pollacca in his op. 2, or his op. 3 with cello. Perfectly consistent. So if you believe op. 22 should be interpreted in single-beat, this also applies to the other ones.
@@jorislejeune I would think so, around 1/4 = 48. This tempo brings out the maestoso - courtly Polish dance?
@@petertyrrell3391 a quick youtube search reveals that today the polonaise is danced at about 92 per beat (which equals one step) in single-beat, just look for yourself. So if Chopins MM are misinterpreted and his music is played twice as fast, the dancers have miraculously sped up with a factor two as well. Most peculiar.
@@jorislejeune We are not talking about modern practice - note that 19th C polonaises are indicated Allegro moderato/ allegretto, so nearer tempo ordinario.
Another example that comes to mind is the C Minor Nocturne, op. 48.
I believe you're required to take the whole beat approach in order to keep the direction of this masterwork. Personally it's one of my favorite Chopin pieces, the sorrow, majesty, depth...modern recordings simply ruin it. Of course people can play it beautifully, but everyone (no exaggeration) blatantly and confidently ignore the tempo indications and it breaks the piece. When you don't follow the changes in tempi accordingly (as Seluece noted Chopin was fastidious), the emotional thrust is destroyed. This is evident in that pianists play the middle section faster than the first -- exactly opposite of the "poco piu lento", and then they're forced to ignore again the "doppio" change, because to play at a true double-time from their set tempo would be technically impossible. And there a slow tempo *must* be retained: a. the melody has to sing over the rhythmic turbulence (the melody is always hazy in professional recordings), and b. that breathtaking and tragic harmonies are lost when played at the modern speed. There's more that can be mentioned.
On another note, Wim, your recording of his 4th Ballade is my favorite I've ever heard and is the only one I can listen to.
First.
Listening the begining with the full cicle concept it is very interesting because the peace moves you to dance it, like in a waltz way, or a ballroom dance way. I love your channel and your work.
I cant wait!!
we must backtoschool, we must have some more patience!
You have convinced me. Brilliant insight.
But like when are you gonna talk about the tempo of Sonata 2 mvmt 1 😭
do you think its too fast
No it's just I have been asking about it for years and kept being teased about it to the point where it's liké bruh what is going on
I have never heard of WBMP, but there are quite a few such terms that are relatively "local". Depends on where you studied. How would you get on with the British descriptions of note length?
You have never heard of it because the term was invented by this channel only five years ago. It is not in general use. Before then the idea was referred to as 'double-beat' (Doppelschlag in German), which I believe was first used in this sense in 1980 by Willem Retze Talsma, in his book Wiedergeburt der Klassiker.
@@DismasZelenka Thanks for that
Have you looked at his Op.3 metronome mark? Maybe worth exploring.
"Only in print did Chopin, Lento ma non-troppo simultaneously adding a metronome mark." Polish pianist and editor Jan Ekier (1913-2014) writes in the Performance Commentary to the Polish National Edition that this étude is "always performed slower or much slower than is indicated by [Chopin's] tempo [M.M. 100]"...Whole beat works for Lento ma non-troppo. Online Metronome Marks lists Lento as "Lento Slowly 40 - 60 bpm"
@@Renshen1957 But that is 40-60 BPM for the quarternote is it not?
striving for a historical approach is good and very important, claiming that music should be played one way instead of another is pure ego
in fact it is the opposite
That's right, in fact, any 'should' statements are based on ego and not on understanding
The same 'problem' with Czerny's work. Take any of his compositions and compare to the YT-tempo in the score. Once you know it you can't unknow it.
Ok and what about the billions of sources that are in favor of single beat
@@letsbrawl945 What sources are in favour of single beat?
@@petertyrrell3391 Oh boy lol. I could bring up a billion, but just to keep it simple, there's an 80 page document filled to the brim with sources that disprove wholebeat.
@@letsbrawl945 Let's have it, then, if it really exists.
@@dorette-hi4j Go over the videos of this channel from the last few years. Be careful about old documents - "Schlag" or "beat" often means "tactus", a two-fold movement.
I’ve been a long follower of your project but there’s something I don’t quite understand. When a composer writes 1/4 = 60 does that not mean 60 quarter notes a minute? Because for the current use of the metronome that would be 60 clicks in a minute, but for your use (the traditional use perhaps?) of the metronome you would need 120 clicks per minute. So does the 1/4 = 60 then mean that there are 30 quarter notes a minute? This is just something that I don’t understand and need clarification on.
1/4 = 60 refers to the tactus of the metronome; the beats in a bar would be each single part of the tactus, so 1/8 = 60 in the piece.
@@dorette-hi4j So why was the metronome referred to as a "Pendel"? The basic unit of measurement of a pendulum is the period, a two-fold movement just like the Tactus, so not totally irrelevant. You don't seem particular well-informed on this matter. Why are MMs from England in the early 19th C on average half the value of those originating in the German-speaking countries for equivalent time indications and textures?
@@dorette-hi4j Look at early published editions with MMs. Nothing of what you have just said suggests anything other than the metronome was considered equivalent to a pendulum.
@@dorette-hi4j I’ve been asking him to show the ‘double relationship’ between the UK and the continent over several years-I even showed him his claim that there is such thing in one particular Novello edition is false. The next step he took was asking where he can find the relationship by commenting videos of WW (or Bernhard Ruchti, I don’t remember it correctly). It is completely waste of time to talk to Parrot-Troll.
@@dorette-hi4j I think you will find DB was used in French sources in the 19th C (une vibration = period normally). I am familiar with the sources and have read them several times. You can approach the problem from another angle: if the original metronome instructions are read in SB, then an average 4/4 Allegro (i.e. not a presto or prestissimo) would be 1/4 = 160, which would mean rather a lot of 16th notes per second when it is only an Allegro; in DB we get 1/4 = 80, which coincides better from timings by Carr and Tuerk, for example, and the music becomes comprehensible.
Can you talk about the (clearly early half-beat) tempi of Clemens Krug's Bach concerto arrangements?
The book will, might be a great topic for a video as well!
If those who claim that single beat ueber Allies, are a bit hypocritical if they don’t play the slower pieces in single beat.
Wim Winters is so misleading. None of the pianists that were shown in the video claimed that the piece should be played at the given tempo. They simply perform the slow version because they prefer it/are too used to it.
Who are they that accept SB, but don't apply it to slow pieces?
@@petertyrrell3391 It's literally personal preference man. I think that single beat is how we historically played, but does that mean I like every piece played fast in the original tempo? Does that mean I can't play some pieces slower because of my personal taste?
@@letsbrawl945 What’s misleading? Conservatories, University Music Departments, etc., not addressing the incongruity of unplayable or playable but unplayed as too fast or doesn’t make sense and still maintain that every Maezel Metronome indication is played in single beat.
As to the pianist in the video, they acknowledge that the E major Etude of Chopin featured in essence does not convey what Chopin intends with the metronome mark, without questioning why many of Chopin’s MM are unplayable (with the articulation indications), potentially injurious, or just impossible) which follows in lockstep with the above named institutions vehement statements of late Romantic Period pianists to present played slower than Beethoven, Liszt, et al that came before, while the written literature of the day through to early 20th century 180 degrees the opposite in that performances speeded up.
Yes, a run on sentence, however, Wim Winters, points out the obvious, and included the clips to show that among the Metronome marks, there’s no secret among Pianists do not make sense, in essence if not stated, do not make sense or unplayable in single beat interpretation.
Willard A. Palmer Wrote on this in his editions published by Alfred Edition in 1972 in Schumann’s works and gave MM markings of Concert Pianists. Palmer observed in Chopin Preludes another performance practice observation, that the Pedal indications did not work for modern pianos (even for an easy piece as the A major Prelude) which he gave an alternate pedal indication in the final measures; commented that although playable on the fortepianos of the day.
In summation, Wim Winters didn’t invent the WBMT…,yet Academia continues to ignore the issue, or sweep the issue under the rug hoping it will go away or claim single beat always was in existence with apologist explanations which do not stand up to scrutiny. Beethoven made great efforts to provide MM marks for all his Symphonies, yet by the Mid 19th Century these were omitted in more than a few published scores. Even for his other works in recent Urtext Editions String Quartets, you might find these indications not at the beginning of the movements but rather buried in an appendix.
Give me a single Chopin piece that isn't playable in single beat at the given tempo marking. The pieces being injurious is just a massive technique issue. Chopin was a virtuoso pianist, and if you think you're gonna get some slow piece that any amateur pianist can play in double beat, then you're just plain wrong. Literally any pianist who has played a little bit could play Chopin etudes in double beat. Are we comparing them to Chopin? Really? You're talking about pieces in single beat not making sense, yet some pieces are so ridiculously slow in double beat that they don't at all make sense either. Conservatories, university music departments, they're not trying to hide anything. They acknowledge how ridiculous this theory is and they have no reason to spend any time researching or covering it. Accept that this theory is completely ridiculous, please.
But have you read Takt und Pendelschlag? 😅
Amen to all this. When the book is available I will purchase several copies to share with important people in my life.