Tempo Reality Check - Chopin, Nocturne Op. 15 Nr.2 - Feat. Garrick Ohlsson
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 4 июл 2024
- Chopin's Nocturne in F# Major, opus 15/2 is a piece we all know inside out. And as for many performances, also this Chopin Nocturne is played almost indentically by many pianists. As for instance by Garrick Ohlsson, who's beautiful live performance is taken as an example for this video. Question is, the way we know the piece, is it also what Chopin had in mind?
--
Our complete recording of Beethoven's symphonies in Whole Beat: www.authenticsound.org/beetho...
--
🙋Join our Patreon community and help us create more content▶ / authenticsound
--
📩Stay informed! Join our mailinglist (yes we have one too!) 👉bit.ly/as-mailinglist
--
📱 Website: ▶www.authenticsound.org
0:00 What did Chopin have in mind?
1:01 Why is our current metronome reading problematic?
1:47 Our solution: WBMP
2:26 How can we proof WBMP?
3:38 How can me measure the tempo of a performance?
4:19: Garrick Ohlsson plays in Single Beat at the beginning
4:32 calculating the average of the piece, worth our time?
5:37: the average tempo is 25% slower in this performance
6:20 Why is Ohlsson 25% slower on average
6:48: in Chopin's music, the left hand should be played strictly in time
9:19 issue 1
10:45: issue 2
12:44 issue 3
14:21 issue 4
14:40 issue 5
15:10 The mysterious recording
Recording- Video Garrick Ohlsson: • Chopin Nocturne Op.15 ... 
Видеоклипы
Amazing quotes from Eigeldinger's book! It's by my bedside table.. now and then I open it and read a page. I find that anything I read about Chopin, coming from his contemporary sources, is put into coherence by thinking of his music in double-beat. It certainly takes a TRUE musical virtuoso to keep the left hand stable while dreaming with the right hand! It ain't easy!
Couldn't have been said better! Thank you Wim
This is a beautiful video. I wish we had more recordings of pugno. Thanks for the video. I agree with whole beat in Chopin
Grazie mille, davvero un ottimo lavoro complimenti per la dettagliata descrizione del tempo!
Pauline Viardot is one of the most fascinating figures in 19th century music and not a bad composer, herself. Everything from performing the first performance of Don Giovanni given in the United States to Brahms talking her out of retirement to give the first performance of the Alto Rhapsody to advising Bizet on Spanish music as he was composing Carmen. She had wanted to be a pianist but her mother insisted that she become a singer, instead.
Thank you for the video. The Chopin's Nocturne Op. 9 No. 1 is also indicated as Larghetto. So, as I see, In both nocturnes (Op. 9 No. 1 and the Op. 15 No. 2) the same word appears written in the beginning of the score to specify the desired tempo by Chopin. And in both works, the left hand develops an accompaniment based in eight notes or quavers. What I can't understand, if both nocturnes share a similar tempo as expressed with words, is why the metronome indication in the first of them (Op. 9 No. 1) is quarter note equal to 116 and in this one quarter note equal to 40. It is difficult for me to understand that similar works (both are nocturnes), from the same composer, with similar accompaniments in the left hand and using the same Italian word to define the tempo, have such disparate metronomic values, one being more than twice as fast as the other. It has always seemed to me that the mark of 116 in the first nocturne (understood as a SB) was not correct, in my humble opinion I could never consider that tempo to be a "Larghetto". The interpretation on WB, although perhaps is too slow for that nocturne according to what we are used to listen, would have much more coherence in my opinion with the indication “Larghetto”. I hope you can make a video of that nocturne and another one about the Op. 9 No. 2 of which apparently there are different metronomic indications in the first editions compared to the autograph.
Perhaps you cover this in another episode but I'm very curious to know historically what happened that whole beat was moved away from or forgotten. When did it happen, over how long a period? Was it a gradual transition or a sudden change?
How is the version at 2:00 even remotely presto? Your logic amounts to “I can’t play at the specified tempo, hence it is impossible”
There is "presto" in the 18/early 19th C sense of the term and "presto" in the sense of what many modern musicians understand the term. A few mathematical calculations will tell you that in single beat many faster movements have notes which are faster than can possibly be played even on a modern instrument or can be processed by the brain.
@@petertyrrell3391 How was the meaning of presto different back then? Even in Mozart’s time, he remarked that “Clementi is a charlatan, like all Italians. He marks a piece presto but plays only allegro.” From this alone we can conclude that even back then, presto meant very fast so as to be technically demanding. Moreover, it suggests that composers did not always follow their own tempo indications (although if anyone had the sheer virtuosity to play at Czerny’s specified tempo, it was probably Czerny).
A bit of research will you that speeds increased from the 18th C even up to the last century, partly due to changes in tastes and technical improvements of instruments. If you do some maths, you will find that in fast pieces the number of notes per second often exceeds the number of notes per second (even 20 +!)that can even be played on a modern instrument let alone on a piano without an escapement mechanism; also this number is too high for the brain to process. Let's have some more maths, science and some competent musicological research, please, not emotions. You try to show too much from your Clementi/Mozart example and don't compare with it other sources -try looking at Carr and Tuerk, and see what speeds they come up with.
One should therefore beware of imposing ones own interpretations (20th/21st century) of tempo words on those of earlier times. Also words, not only those used in music, change their meaning.@@dorette-hi4j
How can you say that when you appear to have no evidence? Wim showed a speeded up version and anyone can should be able to hear the impossibility of the music working at that tempo. You seem to be sounding off emotionally and have never done any serious research on the subject of authentic tempi.@@dorette-hi4j
Arguing that thousands of incredible soloists who spent their entire lives playing music have missed the fact that they have been playing everything double tempo is quite something. Extremely likely a delusion of grandeur on your part.
I didn't say that. They do not play in 'double' tempo, they don't reach the final speed at single beat, yet instead of asking questions as to why that is, they keep fighting a losing battle.
@@AuthenticSound Maybe it's called an 'indication' for a reason. Maybe it refers to the opening bars and not a midi rendition. Maybe a composer gets overexcited sometimes when asking for the impossible or acrobatic. Maybe playing everything at half-tempo is a sure way to play the music the wrong way. I don't know. You appear to be certain, but you are in disagreement with thousands of rather impressively capable interpreters who would have to be foolish to not ask the question. Perhaps you know better, or maybe you should talk to them about it.
I have to wait for the Beethoven box set...
Great video. I played this nocturne in 2004. Garrick is following harpins has agogic, not has dinamic... In Chopin, hairpins stand for tempo!! I've been searching a lot in his manuscripts and it's becoming very clear that he also did this difference just like is proven in Brahms. They even call it Brahmsian hairpin... Don't know why, in my opinion (just opinon for now) even Beethoven used it that way... Beethoven uses hairpins in single chords or notes that can only stand for tempo change, not for crescendo since that is impossible on the pianoforte, and i refuse to think Beethoven wanted that, he wanted the tempo to move. So from Beethoven to Brahms there is a lot to prove or disaprove in markings that allow tempo changes. Best wishes! Love your videos!
I have not seen any remarks about this in historical sources. Hairpins were used to indicate short and small dynamic changes. On the other hand, the text “cresc.” and dim.” were used for longer and larger dynamic changes.
Can you point to any historical sources about this agogic interpretation? I could only find modern sources/interpretations. Surely, if hairpins were followed agogically, someone would have commented on that, right?
@@ppopoisaname2860 Yes, Fanny Davies attended a Brahms rehearsal where he states this directly to the orchestra he was conducting. It's not an opinion, it's a fact... There are some researches made after this on Chopin but they are only articles that only show the tip of the iceberg. In Waltz op. 18 for instance Chopin even writes crescendo along with diminuendo hairpins, can you explain that only in a dinamic level? No, they mean diferent things, Chopin was not stupid... I've came across with dozens of this examples in his manuscrits, specially in the later ones... If you search for "Brahmsian hairpin" you can find "cientific" articles in this subject not only for Brahms but also Chopin. Best regards!
@@andre.vaz.pereira aha, you see. Czerny, in his Pianoforte-Schule, Op.500 part 3, explained how you can play a “cresc.” or a “dim.” along with hairpins that can go in either direction. For example, what you do is that you play crescendo overall over a given time, but you also vary your touch/dynamics slightly according to these hairpins. These types of hairpins don’t indicate any tempo changes, rather they indicate small dynamic changes within a larger dynamic change.
@@ppopoisaname2860 That's why Fanny felt the need to clear things up for Brahms... Because they once meant something but with the generation 1810 started to mean another thing speacially after 1840... Czerny op. 500 is from 1839... It was in the midle of the revolution, it tells us about the past) and thats why Beethoven is just an opinion)... Czerny is not the Bible to interpret Chopin, or Liszt or any composer of the 1810 generation that had a bel canto style (In the Nocturne you can even read "a piacere" that is very connected with opera singing). As for Brahms he personally cleared it up for us regarding his music like i wrote in the previouse response, so there is no need to argue about that, he responded to you directly.
As for Liszt, in his 2nd version of the transcendental etudes he writes an alternative sign to tempo flutuations (with two paralel ligns) and abandoned it because (in my opinion) the hairpin did that same thing when they were published in the third version. So, the evidences are multiple... Also Lamond (pupil of Liszt) plays Liszt following hairpins with tempo flutuations (ear for instance his "Un sospiro").
For your curiosity there is a video on Tonebase with Seymor Bernstein in this matter of Brahmsian hairpin on Chopin's E minor prelude (1838)... I eared a lovely masterclass with Gregory Seabok on Liszt's Funerailles back in the 80's where he also states this about hairpins on Liszt's music (it's on youtube). And of course listen to Rubinstein or Lipatti rendition of Chopin's "Barcarolle" (a late work wich has hairpins all over the place in the manuscript... where crescendo and hairpins point in diferent ways, something that Czerny failed to explain...) and you will se how they use the hairpins as a tempo flutuation tool because that was the way that generation was brought up. Best regards!
@@dorette-hi4j You can chose the quotes you what... Here is another that one says that it envolves tempo changing: "The signs [hairpins] stand for accelerando and ritardando" (this should be the begining of your quotation, you only showed the final part...). Another one:"He would prefer to lenghten a bar or phrase rather than spoil it by making up the time into a metronomic bar"... The quotation starts: "Like Beethoven, he was most particular that his marks of expression (always as few as possible) should be the means of conveying the inner musical meaning." and so on... Best regards, it is a fascinating topic. I agree with you!
Who do you think was the earliest composer to use single beat?
17:25 « Malgré l’indication du métronome, je pense que ce nocturne est généralement joué trop vite. » Read this again slowly. Is he really stating most people played it faster than quarter note 40? The key is the first word! This should also make it clear to you that he doesn’t “connect” quarter 40 to the tempo he prefers (it is also not the same sentence, by the way).
If the publisher, editor, the readers and Pugno himself all failed to see the paradox you’re seeing, it might simply be because you misread 🤷♂️
Let’s analyze it logically: the only way to appropriately use the term “malgré”, is by intending that the indication is already too fast. Or by which increments should one play it, or “the others” played it, so it sounds or sounded not “too fast”, but “appropriately”? By 12 more BPM? By 6? Was he wrong in using malgré? Well, one may try to prove it so.
Remember, he is already advocating for 65% of the indicated speed. Malgré then seems appropriate,
Could one say that malgré equals to not caring? Well, almost halfing the speed seems to go with that deduction.
Unless, of course, he did intend that the MM was already too fast. And then he did care, and that’s why the use of “malgré”.
You could also think, how many BPM’s over Pugno’s speed was “too fast” for his taste.
I'm sorry, but arguing with Garrick Ohlsson about Chopin is a losing argument.
i would look forward to a debate 😎
Can you suggest a performer of Chopin who does not do this, but plays more as you think Chopin played it?
if indeed Pugno intended quater=40 as double beat, then his own metronome marking quaver=52 is even slower almost half of whole beat tempo. If Pugno intended the latter as single beat, he should have said so. Otherwise everyone will get confused. If so, he is contradicting himself as his single beat tempo is faster than Chopin’s original double beat. Do you really think your logic makes sense?
we get confused, but we should not project that confusion on his generation since there is no sign they also for confused of what he published. bottom line here is that also this piece is not playable in single beat. And this series is to be continued.
so, did Pugno somehow take Chopin's supposedly whole beat MM and instead gave his own in single beat?
yeah. not confusing at all..
@@dorette-hi4j indeed. i was just affirming the OP's line of thinking in different words.. because switching the MM from 1/4=40 to 1/8=50 just like that, without proper commentary, makes no sense..
I wonder why when students of Chopin edited his music they didn’t mention or give some remarks on the contradictions or anomalies of (their) contemporary performance.
Because this guy is the equivalent of a flat earther in classical piano. Not good enough to make a career out of it and instead of humbling himself, he prefers to act like everyone else is wrong.
Hi Wim, I'm the guy behind the Crazy Metronome Marks account.
Just in anticipation for any further videos on Roaul Pugno's comment on this being a 4/8, I've got my own opinions on this that I've found as a result of studying the metronome marks and doing some statistical analysis.
Firstly I wanna say that, this metronome marks is almost certainly whole-beat so my comments are not here to disagree and conclude they are single beat. And secondly, all the mathematical analysis I've done is independent of metronome reading. So that is to say you can get exactly the same results that I've found on the explicit assumption that they are all single-beat, thus avoiding any issue about what they should be.
I've found that the note value for which you feel the pulse of the music affects the tempo of an Italian tempo word even if the notation is exactly the same. For example Maezel (and many Germanic composers) give 1/4 note = 160 (or minim = 80) as the standard Allegro tempo whilst someone like Herz give 120. This is because the 160 tempo implies you're meant to feel the pulse in crochets whilst the 120 tempo should be felt in terms of its quavers. There's tons and tons of examples I could give where feeling the pulse quavers for a 4/4 must be the case, but statistically you can prove this fairly confidently using the metronome marks and doing some calculations/analysis. And so the ratio of tempi between the 2 positions 4 thirds (or 1.3333333 recurring however you wish to view it)
So there are lots of 4/4 allegros using semiquavers that gravitate around 160 and then a load of others that are around 120. And this is true of prestos as well. The standard presto tempo should be around 1/2 note = 108 (or 1/4 note = 216) so, if you feel the pulse in quavers and divide by the ratio given, you get 1/4 = 162. And as predicted we have ones like Moscheles' metronome mark for mozart sonata no.4 3rd movement of 152, or the 3rd movement of k283 which works out as 1/4 note = 162. If fact across many Italian tempo words I found dozens upon dozens of examples that show this to be the case from roughly 1600 to 1700 scores that I've fully analysed so far. I've got 10s of thousands to get through and given that I don't have the time to fully commit to it, a full statistical analysis of metronome marks that are all potentially whole beat is probably gonna take me a full decade to do well.
And one of the examples that I would point to, you've given here.
For a slow movement in a crochet based meter (e.g. 4/4 or 2/4) the default position is to feel the pulse in quavers. Benjamin Carr states this in his piano school book, Hummel says it in his conducting treatise (if I'm not mistaken), and even Maezel effectively implies you need to feel the smaller note subdivisions in slower movements in his metronome instructions. There are some example where that isn't the case so you are actually feeling the semiquaver or even the crochet, but generally speaking you feel half the base of the time signature in the slow movements (e.g. the pulse is in quavers for a 2/4)
From my own theoretical calculations and from the averages of the metronome marks, a 2/4 Larghetto should be roughly 1/4 = 54 in tempo. I must point out that I don't have much data for this yet as Larghettos aren't the most common, so it is potentially subject to change. But given what I have I'll continue as is.
1/4 = 54 would be feeling the pulse in quavers, but suppose we wanted to move over to feel the pulse in semiquavers, what would the tempo now be? Well, we know what it would be. We'd divide 54 by 1.3 recurring (or equivalently take 3 quarters of the speed) and that gives us crochet = 40.5. Almost exactly what's written.
So, my feeling is that Pugno is saying it's a 4/8 due to the metronome marks being like this, however, he still feels that it should be a 2/4 where you feel the pulse in quavers, and thus that is why he, miraculously, gives quaver = 52, undoubtedly in single beat. Because that is literally the perfect Larghetto tempo for a 2/4 with the pulse in quavers.
These are thoughts/conjectures I've found that are pretty well attested to because of the metronome marks. It's not a guess or blind stab at an ad-hoc post-rationalised excuse for anything. This is why the metronome marks left are such a Godsend. Without them it would be bordering on impossible to work out what I've described and even then, it's gonna take me a very very VERY to work it out fully. Because, for some reason, musicologist seem to be allergic to mathematics and good statistical analysis.
@@dorette-hi4j No I'd have to disagree, Benjamin Carr says exactly the same thing, along with other composers/writers implying it, and there are dozens and dozens and dozens of metronome marks/scores that feeling the pulse in a note value not in the time signature is obvious and even statistically provable. And this analysis is still perfectly valid even on the explicit assumption that they are all single beat.
If you've spent the last 2 years studying literally thousands and thousands of these things, it is STUNNINGLY obvious that it's the case. And my research is specifically to understand how notation works in explain why the specific numbers come up time and time again, and can you reverse engineer them to work out the speeds for Italian tempo words against specific notation. (The answer broadly speaking is very much yes)
I undertook this research off my own back for the reason that, I heard a lot of people say "italian tempo words basically don't mean anything at this point in time" and even I intuitively knew that was wrong, I couldn't prove it. And in trying to find any musicology paper addressing this, I couldn't find a single one that did anything like what I'm doing. Not a single one had anything like "here are 10,000 metronome marks we've mathematically analysed and here's what we can and can't say about them objectively". I was so shocked by how completely bereft musicology was on this issue. Some of the most basic questions you could ask about the metronome marks haven't even been touch. If I was a musicologist I'd be deeply ashamed of this being the state of musicology. There just seems to be such utter garbage in terms of any real kind of analysis. There's just a lot of hand-wavy heuristic bollocks said about this sort of thing that is so obviously wrong given the endless counter examples I'm finding pretty much daily.
@@dorette-hi4j no this is definitely false about benjamin carr given that he was english by birth.
Besides, the metronome marks make it stunningly obvious that where the pulse of the music lies is not necessarily the same as the time signature. There are 4/4 s that I suspect count 1,2,3,4 but you feel the pulse in quavers whilst others are more like an 8/8, and this IS PROVEABLY the case using the metronome marks. You are able to calculate this, and I indeed have calculate a great deal of this with tons more stuff to go.
Without the metronome marks, working this stuff out would be bordering on impossible. I actually can't envision how this would be the case without them, so maybe it would be impossible. But like I say, the metronome marks are an absolute godsend on this front.
And I should point out it works the other way as well. There's a tomaschek metronome marks of 1/4 note = 160 for an Allegro using semiquavers that has the time signature 4/8. Absolutely undoubtedly the case that this has been metronomised as if it were a 2/4. So why not just use a 2/4 bar structure here? I have no f**king idea whatsoever. But funnily enough, neither do you. You're guess is as good (or as bad) as mine.
Or let's take a example by Reinecke in which he gives 1/4 = 160 for a 3/4 ANDANTINO!!! But when you see it uses quavers only then, an andante with semiquavers marked 1/4 note 80 is the exact same absolute speed. So whatever pulse you should or shouldn't be feeling as the tempo in the first case, must be twice the note value of the typical case. Otherwise you're going to have to argue that 1/4 = 160 really is an Andantino tempo in absolute terms.
So you can quote as much as you like and disagree with the interpretation but 1. it obviously the case Hummel and Carr are saying this for slow movements (nothing to do with feeling the pulse out of line with the time signature of "fast" movements btw. So that is to say Allegrettos and upwards) Louis Danel implies the same thing, Maezel effectively implies the same thing by suggesting different note values for different speeds, and things like the opening grave to beethoven's pathetique sonata can't be felt in its crochets because it's too slow for humans to count properly. The Adagio is just as bad, plus it's half the speed of a standard 1/4 = 60 adagio. Easily explainable as a 4/8. Problem solved. And this is all regardless of whether pulses coincide with counting or not.
It doesn't matter if texts say what they think should be the case, the reality of what pragmatically is on the ground regarding these numbers is what's telling me what's true about how notation and tempi is used.
And let me repeat for a 3rd time, even if you explicitly assume whole-beat is false, everything I've analysed and all the data I've acquire still yields this result as I'm describing. None of this is me guessing or conjecturing blindly. The data really does show this when taken collectively and mathematically analysed.
@@dorette-hi4j you've totally just proven exactly why you don't know anything about what I'm saying at all.
I've explicitly said that the assumption that WHOLE BEAT IS FALSE still leads you to this conclusion. And the reason why your only argument is "nuh-uh" is because you don't know what you're talking about, nor what I'm talking about.
You know literally nothing about my research or my methodologies, you know literally nothing about what the metronome marks say, you have blatantly misunderstood my claim that, yes I agree the metronome doesn't NEED to indicate the beat, but there are hundreds if not thousands of examples that I could point to where it is unequivocally the case that the beat and metronome coincide but not the with the time signature. And the reason I know this is because I have made it my focus to objectively find out what we can say about the metronome marks in conjunction with notation regardless of metronome reading. What I'm doing is independent of absolute tempo because it involves cross comparison in terms of ratios.
You don't have any arguments about this because 1. you don't know the metronome marks even remotely well, let alone as well as me, and 2. you don't even understand what the point is I'm making at all, which is made very clear by your ad hoc post rationalise conjectures that do not stand up to scrutiny when actually looking at the metronome marks directly.
My suspicion is you're someone like Dan Wietzmann, or Patrick Hermele, or Bradley Scarf, or someone else who's been shadow banned but is now using a unused account that has been hacked and you've bought off a dodgy site (yes I knot for a fact that that has happened on Wim's channel multiple times before). And you're merely quoting things back at me that have been passed around on forums that you all hang out on. (Yes I know of those as well)
And precisely because you have nothing to say you're now running away like a passive aggressive coward.
@@dorette-hi4j Also while I'm still having a go at you, there's a huge irony here.
I've constantly said that my research and anlysis into the metronome marks of the 19th century is metronome reading independent. So that is to say even if whole beat turns out to be false, my conclusions still hold. And this is because it is based on looking at what the metronome marks say relative to notation and cross comparing in terms of ratios.
So the irony is, you insisting that I'm a whole beater shows that I have a bias that can't be trusted, that statement itself proves that's exactly what you are.
If you were intellectually honest (and saw my actual data which I appreciate is still only with me) you'd realise that what I'm saying about whole beat independence is true. And yet, precisely because you insist there is a dependency shows that YOU have a bias that can't be trusted. Not me.
@@dorette-hi4j because if you have 4/4 allegros using semiquavers at say minim = 80 or crochet 160, you're feeling the pulse (or beat if you wanna po ut it that way, it's literally irrelevant what the term is) of the music is the crochet (obvious, no one is arguing with that) then if you have a cut time using quavers at minim = 160 then it's obviously feeling the pulse in minims AND it's a one to one scaling between the crochets and the minims. In exactly the same way a 4/8 using demisemiquavers saying 1/4 note 80 is the same thing only feeling the pulse in quavers. We ha e examples of all of these described. So when we have 2/4 allegros at 1/4 note 80 with demisemiquavers then the most parsimonious position is to say we're meant to feel the lulse in quavers. And this is something that happens across every italian tempo, every time signature, every use of notation, it is stunningly obvious that the time signatures are being used to the creative discretion of the composer it's not something set in stone at all.
And we can demostrate this to be true using the statistics of the metronome marks to calculate and predict other things, that i have then subsequently discovered to be true. And that is done by seeing the same ratios come up time and time again which allows us to take say a 3/8 using 32nd notes and a 4/4 using semiquaver triplets, are actually the same through analysis. It called normalisation, we can effectively normalise for the notation.
This sort of mathemetics is trivially easy. I appreciate that if you don't this, what I'm saying sounds like magic, but i can't stress how cataclysmically naïve kt is to say it won't work. Because even if what I'm saying isnt true, then this methodology will also reveal that as well.
And let me nip this issue right in the bud straight away. Since you're such a filthy filthy single beat proponent, you're teatering on the edge of screaming "music is not mathematics" again spectacularly ignorant of what statistical analysis can reveal and also, the metronome marks are literally numbers. So this would be equivalent to saying "you can't use maths on numbers."
And notice how I've descibed everything using the idea of ratioed comparison. And since the discrepency between single and whole beat is a scaling factor of 2 (i.e. a ratio) then this also proves that any result i find is independent of how to read the metronome.
Again this is trivially obvious to myself and maybe not everyone. But I've still screenshotted your response to share on my social media for the sole purpose of mocking how stupid your arrogance/previous response was.
That sounds like the 1903 Raoul Pugno performance in the beginning ...
If the left hand were keeping strict tempo then wouldn't the right hand need to equally keep strict tempo? Does it not make more sense to interpret the passage as meaning the left hand keeps strict rhythm while the right hand is free to pursue rhythmic interpretation? The metronome could be a tool to make sure that his left hand kept strict rhythm in the current tempo, no matter what tempo he chose for the section, while his right hand was simultaneously deviating from strict rhythm.
This Chopin rubato” means that the the right hand plays stuff like 7, 9, 33, etc. tuplets that can be “freely” distributed among the left hand strict time rhythm.
For example, you can play a 7-tuplet in two different ways: 3 notes for the first eighth note and then 4 on the second, or the opposite which is 4 and then 3. Of course, this method of distribution becomes much more difficult and tedious when playing like very high numbers of notes like 45-tuplets.
@@ppopoisaname2860The right hand being more restricted in its choices doesn't enable it to play with a different tempo from the left hand. If the tempo of the left hand is strict the tempo of the right hand must be equally as strict. So why the focus on the strictness of the left hand and the mention of the relative freedom of the right hand?
@@mattmexor2882 yes, you play in tempo, but you can’t play something like a 25-tuplet mathematically like a computer would. Therefore, the rhythmic interpretation of that would be different, as you can play that 25-tuplet in different ways, unlike with what you can do with simple sixteenth or eighth notes, for example. That is, you have “freedom” to distribute the notes over the left hand accompaniment for these ornamented passages. Like with most ornaments, they are not and cannot be strictly, mathematically adhered to.
@@ppopoisaname2860What does that fact have to do with my point?
@@mattmexor2882 Sorry, I might have misinterpreted what you said. Nevertheless, I illustrated examples of how this type of “rubato” works, which can also be seen in works of Mozart and, in particular, Hummel. Hummel also reiterates the same point in his pianoforte method book. So, this “rubato” is not unique to Chopin’s music.
General rule is to play in strict time unless indicated by the composer, even in some of these interesting heavily ornamented passages.
First!!!!
But why does Pugno only make a comment on the tempo of one piece?
If he was aware of an older whole beat tradition that Chopin was part of, there would have been lots and lots of pieces to comment.
All he says is that he THINKS this particular Nocturne should be played slower "despite the metronome mark"
I think this quote from Pugno ends up proving the opposite of what Mr W. wants.
Yeah, because Mr. Pugno was making a working treatise on this 21st century concept. So shortsighted of his…
@@AlbertoSegovia. Pugno did also review the Revolutionary etude and a mazurka in the same book, both printed with Chopin's orginal M.M, neither of which he commented upon. Surely, if Pugno knew Chopin used whole-beat, we would have found similar comments about the tempo in these two pieces? His thoughts on the nocturne suggests he valued Chopin's intentions.
@@johnericsson5286 OK but from which set of data do you conclude that the offer is referring to a whole bit metronome practice? For me that’s not extant anywhere, that’s why my response.
Author, not offer.
@@johnericsson5286 what is clear is that he’s speaking of of single beat speeds, both of which fit with his idea of a whole beat “feeling”. Definition of which we only can ascertain in these days of ours, not by him necessarily.
“Chopin’s nocturne in F# major, opus 15/2, is a piece we all know inside out.” …….Umm, sure, let’s go with that
It’s pretty well known.
@@nasirferguson4098 maybe if you think music begins and ends with romantic piano
@@OfficialWorldChampion or maybe. You just aren’t versed in piano music lol.
@@nasirferguson4098 His channel was originally concerned overwhelmingly with clavichord - why would he assume everyone who watches is so invested in chopin
Why does Pugno write "In spite of the metronome marking". Why couldn't he have said "According to the obsolete/archaic reading of the metronome." He was born in 1852 and it seems like he had no idea about whole beat, or else he would've written about it. Why does he speed up to modern speed in the Doppio Movimento. It's Doppio Movimento, not Quadruplicare Movimento. Listening to his other recordings, it seems like he also played everything else way faster than people today, like his recording of the Op 34 no 1 Waltz. And no, it's not because of recording technology, his recording of the Funeral March is a minute and a half longer. In regards to people playing it too fast in Pugno's time, you can clearly see that in the late 1800s and early 1900s people were absolutely not metric rigours who considered the composers text to be the final say. They bent and stretched the music as much as they wanted, and changed the score all the time. To think that the vast majority people in the 1890s/1900s played metronomically or even with a stable rhythmic impetus unless the composer said otherwise is blatantly wrong and stems from lack of information on the topic.
because there was no need to clarify. He spoke to people of his generation, not ours.
@@AuthenticSound So his generation knew about whole beat or not? You imply that they did since Pugno says people play it faster than ♩=40 (which you suggest is impossible). But then it's also implied that they didn't since Pugno says that the metronome mark is too fast. Very contradictory.
@@AuthenticSound
"there was no need to clarify" so why did he do just that? If it was indeed a well-known fact that Chopin used whole-beat, the comment would have been superfluous. If he did think he was speaking to people of his generation who knew about whole-beat just like him, the usage of the words "in spite of" makes even less sense. Interestingly, Pugno gives his thoughts on two other of Chopin's metronomised works in the same book, saying nothing about the metronome marks being too high. Thus, in two out three cases, he says nothing about the metronome mark and in the third case, he says it should be played slower IN SPITE (not because) of the metronome mark. Surely that quite reliably suggests Pugno did not believe Chopin used whole-beat.
do you accept student? i live in NRW and I'd love to learn piano from you
please send me an email through the contact page at our website
There is a wide range of valid tempi for all pieces, depending on how the piece is realised and interpreted in a given performance. Composers often changed their minds about the tempo indications of their own pieces. There is no need to interpret the same piece exactly the same way each time. Perhaps some composers used metronomes in different ways. Sometimes composers even made mistakes or gave mistaken indications.
All of the above is justified to me, and speaks to the fact that sometimes a much slower tempo than conventionally indicated, can be a much more justified and superior aesthetic choice, and sometimes even the only possible choice.
But it seems nonsensical to me, based on this, to pursue a theory which states that about 150 years ago, people's perception of time suddenly got 2x faster and then everyone started using metronomes wrong because Liszt was too good at piano. And that every piece written before 1850 was originally played 2x as slow. That's some Mandela-effect-tier conspiracy theory, and watching a few of this channel's videos over the years has not changed my opinion.
The world got much, much faster over the 20th century than it did in the first half of the 19th, and we have not noticed that the Liszt-era tempi of the Romantic repertoire have become too slow for us, psychologically. The idea of musical tempo perception being socially conditioned has not been empirically validated at all.
The examples of composers changing their minds in terms of published MMs are rare. The purpose however of our research is to understand how these MMs were meant originally. Once we know, it's up to the musician to decide whether to follow the composer's intention or not. It's all fine, but than we know!
@@AuthenticSound"Changing their minds are rare" according to what?? Although chopin is one generation after, in schubert's time, it was more rare that singers, pianists, performers followed exact notes that the composer has written
Hmm all seems very academic, i'd go with what sounds good - which indeed is subjective.
Annoying clickbait.
man, are you off? Many people could actually play well.