What does he mean by Arabic numerals? He says something about Scale degrees but I don’t get what he means? Surely not Nashville number system.

Which recent presentation by Gjerdingen are you referring to?

Well, while reading comment sections of those double beat videos, I observed some fascinating opinions Mr. Hogan has: 1. Single beat explanation for the famous 1808 concert is problematic, but of course double beat is very logical even though suggested timings Mr WW himself provided are even longer than the concert itself. 2. You need to see tempo problems with 19th century view, but single beat is nonsense because double beat is more musical to him. As if he was born in 1800s. 3. Alkan’s timings of his cello sonata is problematic because nobody now is playing the sonata that fast. But of course you need to see this problem with 19 century’s perspective! 4. Alkan’s timings are in single beat, even though he used double beat as everyone did, he just forgot what to do with maths. 5. According to Mr Hogan, Au bord d’une source by Liszt is supposed to be very slow (about 75% slower than modern performance) as their ‘reconstruct’ timings show. But unfortunately he ignores that Bülow said Tasso, published around the same time, takes 20 minutes, in other words, it took the same time as today’s performances. 6. “The single beat side tend to be hysterical.” 7. “You are an organist, you should have more musical sense than these pianists…” Interesting thoughts indeed…

I also have an honest question. How do you use metronome in double beat when time signiture is 3/8?

Hi Nikhil! I think it's important to remember that this entire theory hinges on one core premise: that Maelzl's instructions are being misinterpreted. Another reading of Maelzl's text is that there is simply a mistake and that an internal contradiction arises because of it. As anyone who reads a lot of treatises and historical texts knows, they are riddled with errors (wrong notes, wrong figures, wrong chords, imprecise wording, wrong page references, etc.). Unfortunately, the mental acrobatics needed to endorse whole beat are just too absurd, and while I love your channel (many of my good friends and professors have been featured in your podcast), this video is hard to take seriously because it felt more like an outpouring of frustration that an exploration of hard evidence. There is endless conjecture, interpretations of words like "electrifying" meaning very specific things, when it's probably just good ol' hyperbole. If I say, "that driver was insane," do I mean that he should be committed to an asylum? Anyway, it's almost not worth going down the rabbit hole when the entire foundation of this case rests on what was probably just a mistake, made by a regular guy trying to sell metronomes. Again, happy to look at concrete evidence (e.g. old video recordings matched with sound files, piano roll performances, massive corpus of historical recordings, woodwind cadenza instructions, singing instructions) if you would like at some point. Also, none of the Beethoven metronome markings are too fast. I have a recording on KZbin of Op. 10 No. 3, and I take the first movement faster than he indicates.

Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful interview. I was so inspired by Ioana’s improvising, that I embarked on her Classical Improvisation Course. It feels like the course I’ve been waiting for my whole life! Each lesson, is like discovering a new gift! Thanks so much to you both. :)

I feel Wim’s germaness when Nikhil is like I thought you knew everything! and Wims like ..actually I am just a human being I do not know everything.

There is a short poem named "Two Musicians" by Sara Orne Jewett from around the end of 19th century or so that gives an interesting depiction of one musician playing too fast, clattering across the keys, and a second musician playing beautifully at a more relaxed tempo. It might provide insight into how this general increase in tempo was perceived at the time. There are recordings of it on youtube if you want to look it up.

Whole beat is correct. That's the only way music makes sense.

In the interest of balance, you should also have pointed out that Mason writes in the same article: "Nor should the tempo be too slow. Slow movements are effective, but sufficient animation must prevail to impart life and fervency to the music. A stream may flow so sluggishly that the water loses its clearness. This is not repose, but stagnation. During the musical season of 1899-1900 in New York I heard modern pianists play some of Chopin's compositions so slowly that the effect produced upon me was like that of a music-box running down. One endures it for a while, but finally is wrought up to such a feeling of impatience as to induce the exclamation, "Either stop that thing altogether or wind it up."" I am reminded of Moscheles, who in his old age missed the tempi of his youth: now, he says, allegros are too fast, adagios drag, andantes are too slow, there is no longer any moto in andante con moto.

Sorry, im not stalking-im in a vicious algorithmic loop! You know, i was in music school for almost 12 years and the ONLY time anyone ever asked me to use a metronome was my first semester teacher, who had scale and arpeggio matrices that you had to get up to tempo. Other than that, never. So, i am skeptical that my experience was unique and that the rest of the world has pupils slaving in the tempo den, breaking their digits against the rock of Maelzel. Perhaps Mr. Winters watched ‘L’Enfant et les Sortilèges’ at too early age and this is his way of exorcising the ghost of l’horloge comtoise?

Nice sight reading tips and gold channel in general 😊

So glad that, even though I was not trained as a pianist when I was young and only began at 17, I had been trained in reading music and singing in school choir. I was quite proud of my vocal range and enjoyed singing a whole lot which I do in my car often. It is absolutely the foundation. You just embed the sounds of do re mi fa so la ti do in your head for years and singing them up and down and skip around. Find that you can eventually produce a C note on command to where you can find your way relative to that. Singing is absolutely needed.

Great interview 👍

Wim Winters: «What’s awful or not is personal, and can not be used as a factual argument». This is brilliantly formulated by Wim Winters in a few words. When, you Nikhil Hogan Show, are served an example of a sigle beat performance by Alkan, you answer: «You mean like Le chemin de fer? thank’s i’ll keep Wolfgang Weller’s version, which actually sounds like music». «What’s awful or not is personal, and can not be used as a factual argument». I hope I don’t have to be called Jpris Lejeune to deserve a comprehensive answer to my points. 1. Wim Winters manipulates, here I give one example: Czerny Op 299. According to comments, Czerny uses the word «beginners». Wim Winters take advantage of this as a confirmation that Op 299 will be played in whole beat tempos. But this is one of Wim Winters’ manipulations. He knows Czerny Op 599. The first exercises have minims as the fastest note values. Signature @jorislejeune, quote: «Le Pianiste was a Parisian paper on piano playing and music (from 1833 till 1835) and wrote negatively about Czerny, certainly about the op. 299. They complained that’ all these studies require 800 notes per minute’, which is only true in single-beat. (800 notes per minute equals 13.3 per second). So already in 1833 people in Paris thought of Czerny as a single-beat composer….» The Op 299 has an average of 13 notes per second. Then it would be wrong to call Op 299 for «beginners» when Op 599 opens with exercises where minims is the fastest note value. So what did Czerny mean by the word «beginners» in his Op 299? He believed that Op 299 is the beginning of the development to reach the true virtuosic. Wim Winters also misinforms, a number of times. Here is ne examle: Wim Winters has fine versions of Bach’s two-parts inventions. He follows the doctrine of tempo ordinario, 60-80 heartbeats per minute. But in a number of Beethoven’s allegro movements from his piano sonatas, the allegro movements receive fewer beats per minute than the inventions. Show me the historical sources that tells us that the allegro of the 1800swas slower than the pace of the 1700s tempo ordinario.

Thanks for the interview! The notation course was very interesting, very practically orientated, giving clues on how to reconstruct tempi for a piece where we don't have metronome marks.

I would watch Ben Laude's videos on Chopin, and I wondered how everyone could praise his music. Incomprehensible. And then I watched performers talking about "practice room temp" and I was mesmerized. It is beautiful music when it is slowed down. Nineteenth century humans destroyed our planet. Twentieth century was the period of the Schizoid Man. We are living with the results.

I love when you said "So why does the calculated single beat outcome not match the modern performances timings?", and "You’re using a 21st century perspective on an early 19th century perspective." on another video. Why do you refute 19th century perspective by 21st (or 20th) century performances? (by the way the fastest recording I know for the first movement takes 10 mins with repeat)

They’re just studies and exercises, standard rule of the octave evolutions, barely music at all. I’ve never worked on them but I can play them at those markings. It’s why he wrote them all in C major, your brain doesn’t have to work as hard, you just tell it where to start the passage and where to end, you don’t have to ideate every single note. Furthermore, to assert that because there is a metronome marking that you are not allowed to take time, or more importantly, that rhythm and pulse is the same thing as a dead mechanical oscillation is offensive and anti-human. To then assert that if you can’t match one composer’s metronome marking on an inconsequential study book then you must upset the entire apple cart of musical history is evidence of some kind of neurodivergence. And it’s not just music, you have to assume that the living traditions of social dance have undergone a similar metrical perversion of speed, and that composers did not know how to indicate breaths and phrasing in song, or write songs that could not be performed without breathing in the middle of a word. And I still am curious as to how one is to practice a piece where the composer has marked the metronome in dotted notes. It doesn’t pass Occam’s razor in my book.

What ridiculous assertions. What pianist is there today with 1/100th the soul, the output of Liszt, the “Paganini of the piano”? Would Paganini himself also struggle to get into college? Think of people like Feinberg, who could play virtually any music of the 19th century, plus Scriabin, upon request, and whose WTC is my all-time favorite? Is he also a victim of evolution? In his later years, Liszt may have eschewed virtuosic display, but this is still the man who sight-read the Chopin études and then would embellish them out of boredom, of course historically playing Op. 25 #2 in octaves in the right hand. If anything, the musicians of the past were greater than those of today. Seriously, who is the Liszt of today?? So what of Rosenthal’s claims? Liszt could have been being sardonic. The Don Juan Fantasy is not a galop anyway, I don’t know why anyone would want to play it fast, but I am not a Rosenthal aficionado, i confess.

Excellent interview, thank you so much! I distinctly remember playing the beethoven 5:th presto and wondering why the hell we need to use ricochet bowing to keep up. As well as when I played the first rode and my teacher told me to play it at half tempo. I started to think of the classical composers as humanists, instead of geniuses - people who want to bring love and beauty to the world - not ego, and they composed the sonatas, etudes, caprices to make playing and teaching enjoyable, not as a challenge to the most powerful virtuosos.

A 1st-year conservatory student back in Liszt's day does NOT necessarily equate to a 1st-year conservatory student of today...

one can not deny the extraordinary power and beauty which, previously lain dormant under a single beat delusion, suddenly awakens, spreads its wings and soars with a beat FINALLY made whole - and beauty is truth, and truth beauty ------------ far from the madding crowd

Claims are made in this video that composers meant every piece they wrote to be playable to the average musician. This is assertion is contrary to the historical record and not backed up by evidence. I will provide some evidence to the contrary. A review of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata played by Arabella Goddard (“there-quarters of an hour” for the sonata): “The sonata in B flat occupies little short of three quarters of an hour in performance and the finale, a free fugue is at once, the longest, most mechanically impracticable movement ever written. The enormous difficulty of work has made it comparatively a sealed book to amateurs and professors of the pianoforte; and, while all worshippers of Beethoven’s genius have regarded it as one of his lofty achievements, none but executants of unusual endowment have attempted to play it even in private, much less before a large audience.”

Yui Morishita does performances of these pieces at single beat speeds. It's not correct to call the pieces impossible.

David Stanhope has recorded three different Liszt-Beethoven symphonies in single beat. They are very musical. I don't think we should assume from Liszt's quote that he meant playing at sight at FULL tempo.

Is that rendition of Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in the intro played in a historically accurate tempo?

Win Winters “arguments” are always the No True Scotsman fallacy…. Disapointing as always

Citation please? I find no passage in the project gutenberg edition of Liszt’s letters. If it exists, I would wager that it refers to his 1853 arrangement for two pianos, which is sight-readable but not facile, and was the only way to easily hear Beethoven symphonies before recorded media. I seriously doubt it referred to his solo arrangements, as these formed part of his concert repertoire, which was not known for being sightreadable by freshmen.

Mr. Hogan, can you please ask Mr. Winters how performances of the past could have had approximately the same duration as modern ones, as testified by people from the audience? Maybe you also have an explanation? Thanks.

I have seen semi-compelling evidence recently that the correct metronome marking for the middle section of the scherzo is actually half = 116 rather than whole = 116. my gut says that's not possible because i'm not sure how accelerating to a slower tempo in this way would work, but early sketches of the section show that Beethoven thought of this middle section at first as still being in 3/4 with the same melodic contour as the final version, but moving at a pace where each whole bar in the early 3/4 corresponds relatively to each half a bar in the final version, and it seems like the one time whole = 116 was ever printed on a score of the 9th for that section was due to an error. if it really were true that half = 116 is the correct marking (which already goes against my gut instinct) then I am not sure how that would work in whole beat

Reverting to 37:11, Adolf Bernhard Marx, and the appropriate tempo for polyphonic works. There seems to be an important debate going on about whether fugues have to be played quite slowly, to enable each voice to be heard properly, or whether they can be played at high speeds. Marx is for the slow option, Czerny (with qualifications) for the high option. Thus what Marx might regard as the right sort of tempo could well be half of what Czerny indicates. I have just found, in the Fafner document, an interesting quote about CPE Bach's Heilig ist Gott cantata (an amazing work, if you don't know it you should give it a listen). "Johann Philipp Kirnberger, writing to Forkel in 1779, described a performance in which the fugue "lasted eleven minutes straight through. I disapproved," wrote Kirnberger, "because the performance was thoroughly ruined. I reported this to Hr. Bach in Hamburg, suggesting that [the fugue] require no more than five minutes; Bach, in his reply, set the time at three minutes. But it appears to me that four minutes is the ideal and that a performance requiring eleven minutes cannot be heard without arousing disgust". This is an interesting example of the composer taking a faster tempo than suggested by other musicians (in this case a pupil of CPE's father, JS). The performance available on YT under Hans-Christoph Rademann lasts just under three and a half minutes (just under 6 minutes including the slow non-fugal introduction). Re the Fafner document, which you discuss at 1:07:42 on, it would be better if Mr Winters did not treat it as an attack upon him, "the document is designed to attack me". The author said his aim in collecting data about durations was "to assess the historical plausibility of the so-called 'whole-beat' theory ... as advocated by Wim Winters". In academia, testing the hypothesis of another academic is simply part of the process of advancing knowledge. Taking it as personal hostility, and responding with insults and slurs and misrepresentations, as Wim did, is not acceptable scholarly behaviour.

could also be just composers trolling metronome users or being lazy.

As the comments show, this is a controversial subject that has been discussed a huge amount, both in print and otherwise. The overwhelming academic consensus falls against the "whole beat" theory. However, since reading academic writing can be hard work, some kind soul has compiled a huge amount of primary source material in a single document. Unfortunately it seems that my comment is automatically hidden when I share a link - but if you search "Historical Evidence of Tempi in the 18 th and 19 th Centuries" on the website Academia then you should find it.

from the fafner1988 document: "If we now look more closely at the data above, the first striking thing to notice is that not even a single number remotely approaches the hypothetical ‘double-beat’ duration. Even the slowest recorded timings deviate significantly from what is predicted by the double-beat theory (by 24 minutes in the case of the Eroica, and a whopping 37 minutes in the case of the 9th symphony). In comparison, a few of our numbers match perfectly with the durations calculated in single-beat, and many are not very far behind (the average timing for both symphonies falls short of Beethoven’s metronome by a mere 7 or 8 minutes)."

do you ask him about the fafner document? it shows that the timings from his theory come no where near the timings given in contemporaneous documents for the pieces to which his theory allegedly applies

Somebody let him make a record?? Too bad Florence Foster Jenkins isn’t around to take one of the solos. Seriously, ridicule is the only appropriate response to his ‘theories’.

-Approach to tempo according to Johann Joachim Quantz, German Fluitest and a composer from Late baroque period. (1697-1773) “Sometimes an early writer uses a number in a figurative or pedagogical sense; for example, Quantz’s pulsebeat of 80, discussed in his book about practical music (1752). According to his full text on this subject, which notes the pulse’s variability, 80 was simply a round figure convenient for teaching tempo relationships (recall that Mersenne placed the pulsebeat at 60). Quantz complained that the same piece is played moderately on one occasion, faster at another, and still faster yet another; a Presto is frequently made into an Allegretto and an Adagio into an Andante, doing the composer the greatest injustice. Because the metronome was still far in the future, Quantz had to devise an analogy for teaching tempo relationships. Observing that there are so many tempo categories that it would be impossible to define them all, he selected four Italian terms to serve as the basis for determining the others, and applied a pulsebeat as follows (in the signature of C)*: Allegro assai, a pulsebeat per half note; Allegretto, a pulsebeat per quarter note; Adagio cantabile, a pulsebeat per eighth note; Adagio assai, two pulsebeats per eighth note. “ *In signiture of C means 4/4, as described in previous part of the article. Jerold, Beverly. (2012). “Numbers and Tempo: 1630-1800.” Performance Practice Review, 17(1), Article 4. It means in 4/4, “Allegro assai = 160 BPM per quater of the measure” “Allegretto = 80BPM per quater” “Adagio Cantabile = 40” Adagio assai = 20” I don’t know what can be more clear

Hello Nikhil, very nice interview and enjoyable conversation, thank you for that! I hope you are doing well. Love the comment section too ❤

1:53 Haha I never write my key signatures. I just write F Maj or C# Minor next to the treble and bass when I am quickly trying to write down a new idea.

Back in the late '90s, I downloaded MIDI sequences by Peter R. Wolfe and was astonished by the tempos indicated for Alkan's music. It seemed everyone, even renowned pianists like Marc-André Hamelin, was playing Alkan much too slowly! This realization led me to stop buying piano CDs for nearly 20 years. Authentic Sounds recordings are the first classical CDs I've purchased since then.

34:50 Also the art of preluding was something that was done. It’s always interesting to examine the preludes by Czerny which are shorter and more dramatic openers than the usufiguration prelude

This is a fascinating comment section, and thank you for allowing it to continue. On the hypothesis that there was historically a practice of 'whole beat', of course many rather puzzling things about tempi can be explained. But please remember that 'whole beat' remains an hypothesis. Since there is no clear unambiguous evidence of its existence, then other explanations, less simplistic ones, must be examined. It is clear that one argument some people make for 'whole beat' is that they strongly prefer slower speeds, to the extent that fast tempos make them nauseous. You yourself have just said "Another example was when I heard Wolfgang Weller's recordings of Cramer Etudes No. 72 and 75 in whole beat, and then nearly threw up listening to it being butchered in single beat." (How does one butcher an Etude?) However, individual tastes and feelings are not a reasonable argument. I can just as easily say that 'whole beat' performances of Beethoven adagios almost put me into a permanent coma, but that is not why I don't believe in the 'whole beat' theory. We must adhere to scholarly standards when discussing scholarly matters such as historical tempi, and not let our personal prejudices interfere. I add that it seems to me that some people only want to be calmed, soothed, relaxed, de-stressed by classical music, and there are others who also want to be enlivened, stimulated, excited, passionately aroused. 'Whole beat' does not, it seems to me, cater to the latter group.

Why not just have choir practice? lol

"The metronome marks are in whole beat, the outcome is single beat"? That is a nonsensical statement. If the "outcome" is a single beat duration, it was calculated from a single beat m.m. Can someone explain what Mr W is trying to say here?

Dear Nikhil, let me start by saying that I am the author of said article. I don't mind disagreeing with a fellow musician, but the minimum level should be that what I stated in the article should be reproduced correctly. Wim's refutation is full of straw man arguments and factual errors, I do not know where to start. Let me give some examples: 1. the main object of the article was to give the reader for the first time all of Alkan's timings which we have so far. I compared them to a selection of modern recordings, where I avoided extremes, and have given a fork of 'modern' timings. So I didn't choose 'the fastest on KZbin' or whatever. I even doubt that some of the recordings which I own are on YT. 2. The repeats. Of course we cannot know whether Alkan took all of the repeats in every piece. That's why I wrote clearly in the article that I have compared his timings to recordings who use modern practice. This is not a very big problem, since the majority of the pieces do not have repeats, and they conform to a modern metronome use. So 'to repeat or not?' does not change the inevitable conclusion. Alkan is and remains single-beat. 3. Alkan stopped performing in public for decades, but he never stopped playing and composing for the piano. It is during his self-chosen recluse that he composed his most challenging pieces, like the op. 39. 4. The Franck student to whom Wim referred without knowing his name was d'Indy. There are some aspects in d'Indy's testimonial that are questionable, but he wrote about Alkan playing Beethoven's op. 110 that "it was not Liszt, perhaps less perfect technically but it had greater intimacy and was more moving". He was not in the audience during a concert, and he did not write that Alkan lacked technique. 5. The 'unsexy' possibility that Alkan maybe just calculated the timings is explicitly mentioned in my article. But even then: why would he calculate single-beat a piece that he would play in double-beat? If he considered the metronome a double-beat machine surely he had the brains to calculate in double-beat? Also for some pieces he gives several timings (but very close). So he must have played some of them, no? 6. The practice of 'cuts' in the 19th century is true but in the case of Alkan I'm very doubtful for two reasons. One: his programs are very precise, and when we made cuts (in op. 39 nr. 8) he explicitly sanctioned this and made it clear in the program. Two: Alkan was one of the first Urtext freaks, he refused to teach Bach from any other edition that the Bach-Gesellschaft edition. He was very angry at Czerny who added his own interpretation, just like his friend Chopin rejected Czerny's additions later in life. Alkan was a very religious Jew. The text, and the completeness of the text are sacred and nobody can interfere with that. (The word of God IS God, remember, just look at the awe in which they treat Thora rolls.) His letters are extremely clear about this. 7. I never said based upon Alkans timings '19th century = single beat". That is NOT in my article. I did say Alkan is single-beat, and so Chopin and Franck must be also. I say nothing about Beethoven. That is a straw man. 8. I deliberately wrote a very short article, because the facts are so clear. That WW will devote a whole chapter in his book to refuting the evident conclusion that Alkan was single-beat says something about the amount of intellectual acrobatics he will need to make his case. If anyone want to read the article in question, they can reach me through my modest channel. Best, Joris Lejeune.

Reading your ‘responses’, you are actually a bad person and I feel bad that I watched so many of your shows.

For people who need help understanding the Alkan timings, here is the methodology on the example Wim used: *Sonate de concert in E, Op. 47, Allegro, with repeat* 80 bars, 1st section + 286 bars, 2nd section + repeat = 366 total bars 366 bars of music x 4 quarter notes = 1464 1464 divided by 160 (metronome mark) = 9mins9 seconds (rounded down to 9 on the programme notes) *Sonate de concert in E, Op. 47, Allegro, without repeat* 1st section (no repeat) + 2nd section = 286 bars 286 bars of music x 4 quarter notes = 1,144 quarter notes 1,144 divided by 160 (metronome mark) = 7mins9 seconds The fastest recordings are significantly slower than q=160, and remove the repeat, and are 9mins, when they should be 7mins.

i don't think i want to know what a whole beat performance of tchaikovsky violin concerto would sound like

Stravinsky is WITHOUT A DOUBT single beat