Talk:Metronome
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[edit] CD players help modify the metronome.
count out loud try a variety of tempos put the beat somewhere else besides the 'one'
subdivide!
(theres an x-box game called metronome) wish there was a article on it - im lazy..
>>There's also a Japanese band named metronome. They're fantastic. メトロノーム http://www.artpop.org/meto21/
[edit] Beethoven and the metronome
I edited out the second part of the following statement: "Ludwig van Beethoven was the first composer to indicate metronome markings in his music, in 1817, although the extremely fast markings he put on some pieces led some modern scholars to suspect his metronome was quite inaccurate."
First of all, this notion did not come from any modern scholars; it comes from his 19th-century biographer Anton Schindler--the same one who forged entries in Beethoven's conversation books.
Secondly, Beethoven had two metronomes, one of which still exists. Both were the familiar pyramid-shaped Maelzel type with the double pendulum design stolen from Winckel (by the way, I'm glad to see that this article gets that story right). That type of metronome is astonishingly reliable--the British music critic Peter Stadlen once took several such metronomes and tried tampering with them in any way he could (putting sand or other gunk in the mechanism, etc.) to get them to malfunction. He found that he could alter the tempo by a few percent, but any interference more severe than that would make them stop working entirely.
Finally, there are only a few works in which fast metronome markings are controversial, such as the first movement of the "Hammerklavier" (piano) sonata, op. 106. Its marking is uncharacteristically fast for that type of movement, but I have heard it played at that tempo by the contemporary pianist Ursula Oppens in a most convincing manner--so it is not only physically possible (and would have been somewhat less difficult on a fortepiano), but musically plausible.
The real controversy has been over the slow movements, which in the German Romantic tradition have sometimes been stretched out and played at nearly half the tempo Beethoven indicated. This ultra-solemn, trance-like approach had enormous mystical appeal and some conductors (e.g. Furtwaengler) and string quartets (e.g. Busch) made careers based on it. As a musician I have to respect the effectiveness of that approach, which might be even more effective if combined with recreational drug use. In terms of cultural history, it obviously resonated with deeply-felt notions of German identity.
But that is at best a "special use" of the music for nearly (or during the Third Reich, actually) propagandistic purposes; it isn't what Beethoven wrote. His music "works" and "conveys a meaning" when played at many different tempi, but Beethoven complained in his letters that other people often got his tempi wrong when he didn't supervise their performances, and that was why he was so enthusiastic about the metronome. DSatz 15:42, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
