Beethoven's Way of Playing Hidden in...a Piano Transcription!!

In this video, we delve into Beethoven's 5th Symphony and explore a fascinating perspective on historical performance practices. At Authentic Sound, we've dedicated significant time to understanding how composers like Beethoven used their metronomes. I discuss the Whole Beat Metronome Practice (WBMP) and its implications on interpreting tempo marks, contrasting it with modern practices. We also examine two piano transcriptions of Beethoven's 5th Symphony, one by Hummel from 1827 and another by Otto Singer Jr. from 1906, highlighting how performance practices evolved over a century. Join me as we uncover these insights and consider the broader implications for musicology and performance today. Don't forget to check out our 10-CD box set of Beethoven's symphonies and stream them on Bandcamp. Enjoy the journey into historical tempos and their modern significance!
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[@RealLudwigVanBeethoven]

I appreciate your recognition of my techniques.

[@anthonymccarthy4164]

Oh, and your recordings of the symphonies, sonatas and other works are already a milestone in listening history. They totally improved my appreciation of Mozart as well as Beethoven and Schumann.

[@anthonymccarthy4164]

I am ever more fascinated with the transcriptions of Beethoven's symphonies and those other composers made or had made of their orchestral works. I'd really like to hear you and your colleague go over some of the string quartet literature as Beethoven et al transcribed them. Before recordings those must have been at least as important for their transmission as the original forms of them.

[@davcaslop]

Yes, it might be just a little piece of evidence, but that is actually really powerfull. This year I playes a hummel sonata (Op. 13 no. 6 in E flat major) and it feels like a symfonic transcription of something much greater, yet it is still a sonata. I really loved to play that even though at conservatory you just can't apply whole beat. Great video and I am enjoying the cds and the beautifil package!

[@nicholaslarson3778]

Hello people in 2074!

[@Sveccha93]

Lmao amazing comment

[@ChainsawCoffee]

I have been listening to your renditions of both the Beethoven symphonies and Bach Well-Tempered Clavier. One thing that really stands out is the rests! Gaps in music that produce anticipation! Those rests are glossed over so many times. I have seen rests emphasized by Leonard Bernstein and Seymour Bernstein (tonebase Piano channel), and the effect these have is significant, especially when compared other performances. An effect of tempo is the how the ear reacts to the piece. I have listened to the Cyprien Katsaris and Benjamin Zander performances, and parts of it are so fast that it hits me like "black MIDI," a barrage of tones. While it is quite vigorous, it does not allow me to savor Beethoven's music.

[@Ezekiel_Pianist]

Thats a great point. I have been practicing the czerny transcription of the 5th. I intuitively was giving an accent on that 2nd beat, it really drives the music and makes it feel so powerful and fast in a rythmic way. Like a tsunami approaching a city... just crushing. It really shows the care Hummel Czerny and Liszt gave to the score. When they put pen to paper they really wrote everything that you need. So did Otto Singer, but your right. He wrote for the performance practice of his time and there was just no reason to give the accent for the 2nd beat.

[@brendanward2991]

They've arrived! I've been listening this week to Wim and Alberto's recordings of Czerny's Beethoven transcriptions. They are not like anything I have ever heard before. I thought the tempo choices would take time to get used to, but actually most of the tempi sound very reasonable, and often only a little slower than the usual tempi you hear in the concert hall. Czerny's arrangements are extraordinary--very different from Liszt's two-hand versions.

[@composernotes]

if your tempo theories are correct the famous concert on 22 December 1808, which exhausted the listeners because it went for more than 4 hours, would have gone for 8 hours! How can that be?

[@AuthenticSound]

that is not too hard to answer: kzbin.info/www/bejne/naTRpaOvoNtkoLM

[@edwardwright7329]

Received my Beethoven symphonies!! Glorious!!! I’m up to #7 - tum-ta-ta-tum - joyful dance, not ants in yer pants!!!😼

[@raymundomorales3201]

I have following you for 4-5 years learning about WBMP. My music friends are slowly turning the corner of WBMP. Thank you for everything that you do. Looking forward to read and digest the book.

[@cosimo7770]

At 4:30 he says ''Just give me a minute and I'll come to the point.'' He talks far too much, words words words, without coming to the point. Does he also play music like that ?

[@fenyx044]

Yes he does, he plays so slow that he never got to a coda

[@literaine6550]

I was wondering how the ladies wearing long, billowing skirts with hoops danced to the older dance music that so many play at a zillion miles per hour. 😅

[@johnb6723]

There is only one piano on which it could be played in single beat, the piano belonging to Billy Joel, built by Morton Esterin, who was also Billy Joel's piano teacher, and the father of Robert Esterin of Living Pianos fame.

[@AlbertoSegovia.]

Didn’t know that lore! Thank you,

[@florisheijdra6086]

7:55 ... Finally to the point

[@Renshen1957]

Pianoforte transcriptions are antedated by Harpsichord and Organ transcriptions which date back to Virginal (harpsichord) transcriptions of Lute works and very likely, from The Robertsbridge Codex the earliest surviving music for a keyboard instrument an 'Estampie', a medieval dance very likely a transcription. The work, by the title "Retrover” written at the top of the manuscript might possibly be an early spelling or misspelled from Retrouver (French, to regain or recover)…The was in England during a movement to stop the decline of the French Language (although the four dialects not completely intelligible to the other then in use in France) in the 14th century. Rules and regulations were found necessary at the universities. A fourteenth-century statute of Oxford required the students to construe and translate in both English and French no more than the survival of a custom of making important announcements in both languages. The situation by saying that in the latter part of the thirteenth century English was widely known among all classes of people, though not necessarily by everyone. That being said, and the association of being distinguished of being well educated, or high social status/nobility with French might account for a French word, on an English manuscript of Italian music, primarily vocal motets, another Estampie…and the Recover for keyboard (organ).

[@scottweaverphotovideo]

I have a question for Mr Authentic Sound. I've been very fond of Couperin's keyboard composition "Les Barricades Mysterieuse". The first performances I heard were slow and very sensitive. I ended up purchasing the classic edition of his keyboard works edited by Brahms. I was very surprised to see Couperin indicated it be played 'Vivement'. I think this means lively in English. Since Couperin composed long before metronomes how do you feel about the speeds performers select for this famous piece?

[@petertyrrell3391]

If vivement means the same as vivace, then according to L.Mozart the latter in the 18th.C meant the mean between fast and slow, so not a fast movement, just a middle-range tempo.

[@DismasZelenka]

​@@petertyrrell3391 Vivace heisst lebhaft, und Spiritoso will sagen, dass man mit Verstand und Geist spielen solle, und Animoso ist fast eben diess. Alle drei Gattungen sind das Mittel zwischen dem Geschwinden und Langsamen, welches uns das musikalische Stück, bei dem diese Wörter stehen, selbst mehrers zeigen muss. According to L. Mozart. Presto is 'geschwind' and Adagio is 'langsam'. So the middle ground between them is a quite a wide range, which is why the piece must show you more about the right tempo. Vivace, spiritoso and animoso are character words rather than tempo words. The definitions which follow Vivace etc., i.e. of Moderato, and of Tempo Commodo and Tempo Giusto, are specifically 'not too fast and not too slow', or 'neither fast nor slow, but in the appropriate and natural tempo'; again, in both cases, you have to find out more from inside the work itself. Les Baricades Mistérieuses is alla breve and with few ornaments (see L. Mozart ch.1 section 2 para 6), which suggest a tempo in the faster part of the range.

[@petertyrrell3391]

@@DismasZelenka I don't know the piece that well, so can't comment. In general, in the 18th C the Alla breve only sometimes means a genuine Alla Breve - 2 1/2 note beats per bar, legato, flowing. It can also mean a fast 4 (Hoteterre). Vivace is used after Allegro as a character indication (Czerny), but on its own it was, as L.Mozart stated, a middle-tempo movement. Too play it fast will court disaster.

[@DismasZelenka]

@@petertyrrell3391 Les baricades has the time signature 2, and there are four quarter-notes to the bar. It is a genuine alla breve. L. Mozart's list of tempo words is a bit strange; for instance, Staccato comes between Maestoso and Andante. I would not like to bet that Vivace by itself can never mean fast - as L. Mozart says, the music itself will show you. I can't offhand think of an Andante vivace, but I have seen lists of tempi where Vivace stands between Presto and Allegro. Hummel lists Vivace towards the faster end of his list of Allegro modifications (before agitato, furioso, molto, assai), and then, separately, Vivacissimo, Presto, Prestissimo.

[@composernotes]

the Hummel has changed to the Singer because those notes in the Hummel transcription are not in the score. Those notes are a Hummel invention

[@DismasZelenka]

The harmonies are in Beethoven's score, in the 2nd violins and violas. Singer simplifies by only giving the harmony on the first eighth note.

[@AlbertoSegovia.]

It’s like the Stradal arrangement of the 3rd Brandenburg, at the ending “moto contrario” passage, where Bach does those harmonic diatonic clustering. Doesn’t make sense to play that so fast as usual by orchestras. And a fast speed also does not play along Stradal’s “allegro molto moderato e maestoso” indication. The arranger decided to include the full harmonies, so a practical sense of playing must have been present in his mind. The same practicality that for someone arranging would make his work sellable.

[@AlbertoSegovia.]

A nice parallel comes up when comparing Friedman’s transcription: more sparse, made for faster playing, along with a Vivo tempo indication. Notoriously simpler in that same passage and other vertically loaded ones. Been studying this piece and already had both editions. One can say, yeah this is made to be simpler. But simpler in regards to achieve what? The speed? Then why bother with the “a (trustworthy) baroque transcription for a baroque music” approach of Stradal? Makes sense,

[@AlbertoSegovia.]

I suspect Stradal was familiar with the “church alla breve” concept. XIX c. writings tell about how the ¢ refers to just dividing into two, each bar (as if one bar now contains two, the semibreve substituting the breve, and the minim, each semibreve), tying it with yore.

[@DismasZelenka]

Sounds like a good subject for another video. What theories of the right tempi and the right style for Bach were circulating in the early twentieth century? How are these reflected in piano arrangements? (In IMSLP, the 4-hand arrangement of Max Reger is much less heavy-handed than Stradal, and the 1st movement is Allegro con spirito, against Stradal Allegro molto moderato e maestoso.) As for the Brandenburgs, Bach was strongly influenced by Vivaldi when he wrote them. Vivaldi's music was forgotten by 1800 and only rediscovered and revived midway through the twentieth century. Does that have any bearing on the question?

[@AlbertoSegovia.]

@@DismasZelenka Yes, it's interesting! I find myself partial for a rate of 80 ticks, each one being an eighth note, per minute, parting from the source I quoted when speaking of the notations: "If the beats are made at the same pace in the latter case (¢) as in the former (C), there will be no difference whatever in the effect."; "modern music the average value of each beat is a crotchet, in ancient music it is a minim." Reinforced by the sources found in Auth. S.'s videos and Patreon, among them Quantz, Griepenkerl and that other source in the video about the historic "pendulation" of the minim, the inclusion of that many 16th notes and the 32nd note cadences and the third movement structure, though not the same case nor tempo. It just sounds better; Sadly, Scherchen with that German orchestra does not come close enough; with the Cento Soli, I love it more. Good day,

[@DismasZelenka]

@@AlbertoSegovia. Scherchen's Brandenburg 3 (1960) is deadly dull already - and you want it played at half the speed! What was he thinking? This is the man who dared to give us the Beethoven symphonies at Beethoven's MMs (single-beat) in the 1950s, you can still get the boxed set (I did). For a very moderately paced but excellent Brandenburg 3, try Harnoncourt and Concentus Musicus Wien (1964). If you want your socks blown off, Abbado with the Orchestra Mozart (2007), or Reimar Goebel with Musica Antiqua Köln (1987). I don't know the source you quoted for alla breve, but there is a difference in effect. It is the difference in rhythm between 4 beats and 2 beats. "It just sounds better" to you, but not to me! Of course tastes differ. Perhaps historically you are on the right side.

[@olofstroander7745]

Mr W. forgets the most important thing - what does Beethoven himself write in the orchestral score? Accents on all the downbeats, two eightnotes slurred and two staccato. No quarternote on the second beat. So Mr. Singer Jr does exactly what Beethoven writes and Hummel does not. Where is the change in performance practice?

[@AlbertoSegovia.]

The string section playing an unprecedented chord inversion/harmony at the second beat within those bars is not a very significant harmonic element which Beethoven wrote, and which defines the textural intention of this passage? The articulation change isn’t also, for rhythm? Well at least it seems that Czerny knew what he was doing,

[@DismasZelenka]

He also forgets that Beethoven has the 2nd violins and violas playing in harmony (not in unison) with the 1st violins. This is what Hummel is trying to represent, and Singer is avoiding. Liszt and Czerny have different solutions (15:28, 15:35).

[@AlbertoSegovia.]

@@olofstroander7745 the good thing is that neither “he” or the arrangers forgot about the determining role of tempo in deciding how to represent what they heard,

[@DismasZelenka]

@@AlbertoSegovia. The arrangers say nothing about tempo apart from giving Beethoven's own Allegro con brio and in the case of Czerny and Liszt (not Hummel and Singer), Beethoven's own metronome mark. There is no difficulty in playing two eighth-note chords one after the other at speed: Singer in the bars just before the red marks (14:35) has two examples - does that make him 'whole-beat'? The point of that passage, I think, is the comparatively effortful climb step by step (the sf marks at the downbeat of each bar, not mentioned by Mr Winters!, the thicker harmonic texture, the 1st violin bowing) leading to the top C and the downrush of arpeggios (no sf marks, no slurs or staccato). Hummel, Czerny, and Liszt understand better than Singer.

[@AlbertoSegovia.]

@@DismasZelenka Edition Peters published Singer. I doubt that they lacked understanding of the practicality of doing what he was doing. They also do not explicitly write a treatise on the more open string lines. The point was mentioned: the “problem” is that one generation represents a weaker, yet noticeable second beat, and the other does not; which is evident through the text and its performance, and a significant difference,