Czerny's ABSURD Claim Solves Beethoven INSTANTLY

[@laggeman1396]

I can explain the question asked. It's not hard to understand: You should feel/count the pulse on half notes, in an Allegretto tempo (96 bpm), while it is notated in Alla breve. But Czerny points out, that that is the same as a very quick Allegro molto, if you instead (as normally) count the pulse on quarter notes (=192 bpm). There you are!

[@laggeman1396]

@@DismasZelenka Yes, an instrumental minuetto is often very quick, with one beat per bar. That later became the Wiener waltz! One can also see on the fastest note value (eight notes in this case), that it fits well to be played Alla breve. And that the minuetto in B:s first symphony has quarter notes as fastest value indicates a very fast tempo, with one beat per bar (just as it it written). People could also play very fast in those times and were very skilled at their instruments. So the claim that everything went slower back then is simply not true. Just think of Paganini (contemporary of Beethoven), who inspired Liszt to develop virtuoso techniques on the piano!

[@lucasgust7720]

I find it very funny that he has created a whole channel where all the videos try to demonstrate the same thing.

[@ainoklippel]

Thank you, I used to be a clarinetist and started last year to study music again. I can’t stop listening to these videos and sharing with friends and family. We’ve had some interesting discussions about tempi in various styles of music. Many years ago, I played in a military wind orchestra, and we played all marches in a marching tempo. For example Mozart Alla Turca and Schumann’s Soldier’s March. Many wind players struggle with fast tempi because there’s not enough time to get rid of the air before breathing in again.

[@cyrilflorentin5689]

Dear Wim, I can't agree more! In the early days of the railroad locomotives went incredibly fast or should we say Molto vivace, nowadays we would perceive this as molto lento! It al ends with habits, adaptations and perception. I see and admire whole beat pioneers as music lovers loning to the time perception of centuries ago. Why do people do the Camino de Santiago on foot? Only in that speed the experience does have it's effect, I admire your perseverance! Now waiting for the grear musicians of our era to take on the challenge to open there horizons and try the whole beat interpretations. I never expected musicians to be so narrow minded.

[@lucasgust7720]

Watch here in YT a video named "Symphony No. 1: Beethoven announces himself | Gardiner and the ORR on Beethoven's Symphonies" at 8:52. Gardiner talks about this very same minuet and its tempo saying the opposite of what you say.

[@Petespans]

One word: Planté (1839-1934)

[@AuthenticSound]

and? We know for a fact that one thing they were not interested in is keeping the ""tradition"" rigidly the same. So what you hear with Planté and others (forget about the pianoroll recordings) is the performance practice of their time. Not that of 80 years prior.

[@LangLangsam]

Mr. Winters, what I want to send you is not directly related to this video of yours, but it is generally connected to your theory. It is good for exemplifying counting one beat and two ticks, and for seeing how a "Schlag" is marked down, on the leg. The whole video is interesting, but at 4:35, 5:43 and 6:24 is where the common use of the two parts of the movement and how they are counted is exemplified. You might be interested in using it as material for a video. I like this from the video, 6:36: "Once we get that, everything else is great". Thank you for your work. Best regards! I can't send the link, but the video is called "David Holt: How to Play the Spoons" and shared by banjofolk. (If you were already aware of this, disregard my message.)

[@汗をかいたアヒル]

I had a similar epiphany with dynamic markings- are they meant for each note or the totality of notes held at the moment? I am now inclined to play piano with greater dynamic range and expressivity. With composers earning a living on manuscript royalties it make sense to allow music to be playable to most pianists not just the virtuosi concert pianists.

[@yvesjeaurond4937]

Another thing that might help: a single push-up. Going down and up counts as one. :-) Drop and do twenty 🙂. Félicitations pour tous ce que vous faites pour ramener du bon sens et de la vérité parmi des gens allergiques aux faits, et n'ayant pas fait assez de philo (Gaston Bachelard, _La formation de l'esprit scientifique_, Kuhn _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_, ou Grampp _Pricing the Priceless: Art, Artists and Economics_), ni de musicologie avec des documents. Les ouï-dires ont saisi leurs âmes de musiciens. Bon succès, M. Wim Winters. Et vos vidéos accélérées sont convaincantes/amusantes. Vos contradicteurs se fourvoient devant le métronome, objet technique.

[@lawrencetaylor4101]

I downloaded a metronome app, and there was a warning label: Speed kills…tempi.

[@josephfleetwood3882]

You don't look 52. You are ageing in whole beat.

[@chrisoconnor9521]

Can someone sum this up?

[@laggeman1396]

😂 I don't think so.

[@JuliaCCCP]

Here you go 13:23 and 16:36

[@rlosangeleskings]

I was wondering why you didn't give this talk earlier... I possibly was in the hospital when this came up...but I'm out now and the back surgeries took their toll on me and I'm only walking half as fast as I used to...and I wasn't a fast walker to start out with... The last thing I will add here is Thanks Wim...

[@riverstun]

I think the answer is this: Music that is slightly sharper and slightly faster sounds better than music that is slightly flat or slightly slow. Over time, this means that people tune higher and higher, and play faster and faster. We know that notes today are higher than they used to be. Is it a surprise that people play faster?

[@rlosangeleskings]

Wim...will the Chorfantasie Op. 80 be included???

[@henrygaida7048]

I might have mentioned this before, but I notice something: You are an organist, Widor was an organist, Saint-Saens was an organist, etc. I am an organist: WBMP makes perfect sense to me. I wonder if there is some kind of "tradition" that we have inherited, since, e.g., Bach and Buxtehude just left us the NOTATION, often even without Italian tempo words, and so we need to "decode" the tempo based on the notation.

[@ExAnimoPortugal]

Even though I have been trained as a pianist, I am also an organist.

[@MasmorraAoE]

There are videos of Saint-Saens playing' available on youtube. It's obvious he had superior finger technique, absolutely consistent with "single beat" tempi.

[@AlbertoSegovia.]

@@MasmorraAoE as well as there was Rachmaninoff recording his concerto very fast because of limited recording space. There are comments of how Brahms said one time: no! Too fast! To a conductor, while later on he would conduct that even faster and saying: this is my mood right now. So what’s your point?

[@AlbertoSegovia.]

@@MasmorraAoE there are a lot of piano roll interpreters not following the indicated feet per minute. Check Debussy’s own Clair de Lune; should we unwaveringly play it so?

[@MasmorraAoE]

@@AlbertoSegovia. Ah so you're saying composers did not intend to have one and one only tempo for their works? 100% agreed, now you can stop obessing over 3 or 4 composers with a handful of puzzling MM marks.

[@surgeeo1406]

There was a religion historian who, in a livestream, talked about there being two different styles of History: Comparative, and contextual History. Comparative History is older, and historians of this style work more on the speculative, trying to create a meaning that stretches through centuries, that anyone living then couldn't grasp, but only they, the historians, in hindsight. Contextual History goes the opposite way, they only care about what events and practices mean for the people living through them, and are disinterested in vast sociological implications. What seems to me to be happening in this community, is a conflict of the same kind, there is a grandiose sociological narrative of Classical Music, written by comparative Musicologists, only visible to them in hindsight, and there are the contextual musicologists who don't care about sociology, and just want to understand why a certain composer said and did the things they did, and what it meant for them rather than for intelectuals centuries later.

[@AlbertoSegovia.]

👏👏

[@AlbertoSegovia.]

I would add: they eschew social expectations, pressure and conditioning, as serious researchers need to do. Sociology becomes the ever more complete picture resulting from that research.

[@ksiazecy_wymarsz]

Good morning, can you turn on Polish subtitles for your videos? Regards

[@backtoschool1611]

I have a piano book that would bebused in lessons, and the author says the music of Mozart, etc. was to be played slower than what is played now a days. I eould have see what book it is, but its public domane

[@koenraaddesmet3086]

Did you find the moment or period where the confusion started

[@AuthenticSound]

Very early on, we'll feature texts in the book from 1826 onwards

[@r.i.p.volodya]

Why are you taking Lenny's speculation as anything other than that? He never conducted the piece like that, ever!

[@jurgenkarmeinsky1834]

Mr Winters, i agree 100 percent to your explanation, because i have 35 years experience with the tempo question .

[@lawrencetaylor4101]

I listened to another channel that highlighted the recordings of a "Mad Scientist" pianiste or something like that from the early 20th century. He played difficult pieces absurdly fast. Multo fast. It had the same effect on me as watching a Hot Dog eating contest.

[@JensKristian]

wim, could you please make a movie of Widors 5th, first and final movement, as I'm practicing it in "whole beat".

[@mikesmovingimages]

On the organ, tempo is often a function of the instrument and room. A brisk tempo of the Widor Toccata in a smaller room would be nothing more than mush in a large cathedral with long reverberation.

[@surgeeo1406]

Ah, I totally understand what you mean, but the notion that Beethoven was just slower, in a world which also ran slower, is a tough sell to all of us industrialists, who were born and raised on a apeed track, and associate slowness with dumbness, and speed with virtue, and profit... And as that guy in the last video said, Revolution...

[@scoopadoopy]

Even so, yet most modern music is played/composed at a more reasonable tempo.

[@Renshen1957]

@@scoopadoopyDepends on the medium as to “speed metal”, while Virgil Fox’s Heavy Organ using an electronic organ to play J S Bach faster than the pipe organs could produce tones and against Historical Tempo performance practice, and criticized those who used who followed J S Bach’s manuscripts and publications (Schubler Chorales Preludes printed in Bach’s lifetime) as technically deficient. So what if Fox could play Bach organ works twice as fast on a Digital Organ, he couldn’t and wouldn’t be able on a Baroque era Pipe Organ the physics of air through a 16’ pipe wouldn’t allow this a reed stop would but J S Bach didn’t exclusively use reed stops. And then there’s the mechanical nature of tracker organs vs an instantaneous sound of electronics, plus the ‘room’ reverberation of a Gothic, Renaissance, or Baroque Church. After playing modern pipe organs electro pneumatic actions, the first tracker action manuals coupled, all stops pulled I nearly passed out from exhaustion from the effort.

[@Renshen1957]

@@DismasZelenka Well, the same could said of today about performances of slow pieces now played much faster than originally. Allemandes & Sarabandes were slow entry pieces in the Baroque period (Walter and Mattheson), but these are played by most pianists as fast pieces such as Sir Andras Schiff when he performs Bach’s French Suites live. Stately Courantes become Presto to Prestissimo Correntis. Beethoven wrote Menuetto, not Scherzo… There were Adagios, (minuets were never slow pieces, but weren’t as fast as Gigues), and Grave, plus Lento all of these were understood until the mid-19th as slow tempi until suddenly a shift on Metronomes occurs, Larghetto and Largo change places it’s place as slower than Andante from the Italian verb at a walking pace, with Adagio formerly the slowest speed range on the Metronome Scale. This occurred after 1830 and is found in 1868 UK metronomes Then there’s Czerny’s well known quote of Allegros in JS Bach’s time with the C major Two Part Invention in Czerny’s edition MM mark unplayable even by Lisitsa in single beat when she played as fast as she could.

[@Renshen1957]

@@DismasZelenka The reference in the last sentence refers to Czerny, student and life long friend of Beethoven, and source of a few questioned Metronome marks in his Pedagogical (now referenced as “Instructional Editions” of which he did a complete edition of J S Bach’s Harpsichord Suites, the two Parts of the Well Tempered, ect. and the Inventions and Sinfonias (misnamed later 3 Part Inventions). Since you commented on this video, I took for granted you likewise perused Wim Winter’s series on the Inventions. The series how it relates to historical metronome use…Valentina Lisitsa has a video of her treating the Inventions as Etudes, performing these as “Etudes” at her fastest speed. Czerny’s MM for the collection, for the overwhelming majority surveyed in Wim’s Couldn’t be performed in Single Beat interpretation of the Marks, and Lisitsa’s effort’s were not artistically chosen interpretation speeds, but rather at the extreme limit of formidable technique, not second to third year intermediary pianists at level 5-6 as these are graded. Of the Recordings, Valentina was 84% of the Single beat Metronome indication. Czerny’s preface to the series always referred to Bach’s Allegros as being slower than at the present time. J S Bach used primarily time signatures (with rare exceptions), of the Tempo Ordinario system, which Beethoven referred as obsolete, in context of the metronome, in 1821. As to the dances of J S Bach’s time, the (French) Dance masters besides teaching manners, taught what was prevalent fashion in the French obsessed German States (Dukedoms, Principalities, etc.). Leipzig contained a number of Dance Masters, of the three of which J S Bach was friends, one possessed the finest orchestra in Leipzig. The Tempo Ordinario system was still known when in circa 1801, almost simultaneously, the Well Tempered Clavier was published by Simrock, Hoffmeister, and Naegeli as none of these had added Tempo indications by the publishers. Czerny, the student of Beethoven, the student of Neefe, the student of Hiller, the student of Augustus Homilus (who was also the teacher of Daniel Tuerk), the student of J S Bach…which going back to Czerny’s indications for the Inventions, when in Whole Beat, match Tempo Ordinario Practice in tempi that Praetorius in 1600 and Bach’s student Kirnberger wrote in 1777-8 wrote that C equal the human pulse rate of 60 bpm as an Allegro…in a Major key, slower win a minor key, and with the notes of progressively smaller time values, slower still. I don’t doubt the references you cited, but the speed demons of my younger days (so-called virtuosos) rationalized playing faster for dance pieces, Chopin Waltzes, Scott Joplin’s Ragtime pieces (against Joplin’s printed instructions and his short method), as reason for their tempi. There’s even an elderly Widor recording, who not only stated not to play the Toccata from the 5th organ Symphony too fast, and left a record as to a proper tempo in performance…which almost all the concert organists summarily ignore to be the fastest, Anthony Newman played J S Bach fast in his Juengen Suenden (sins of youth) when he received recording contract. Cameron Carpenter and his touring (digital) is no different than Virgil Fox, possibly the reincarnation if I believed in such…a plethora of technique and not a Ha’penny’s worth of good taste were historical performance practice is concerned. His transcriptions however are excellent, he would make a great theater organist. You might survey Wim’s videos which discuss how performers were speeding up Mozart’s music which they had heard in their youth. There’s other references to the acceleration of tempi. However, there’s too many Metronome marks that aren’t performed at single beat some indications faster than piano actions, faster than humanly possible, some faster than the human auditory system can hear individual or distinguish separate notes. I apologize for the brief and thus Incomprehensible last sentence, but I do not always have time for a complete contextual explanation.

[@Renshen1957]

@@DismasZelenka The Valentina Lisitsa Video had no connection to Wim Winters; it was independently produced and recorded. In fact, Ms Lisitsa was of it use not too pleased about the matter. However, it proves a point, if a very technically proficient and talent concert virtuoso can’t perform Czerny’s metronome marks in single beat for these relatively easy pieces from mid 19th Century…and these remained in print for a pianoforte buying public throughout the the 20th Century and well into the 21st century, then metronome marks of Czerny, Clementi, Chopin, Schumann, Burgmueller, Moscheles Beethoven, et al have been ignored, The elephant in the room remains. Apologist explanations for Beethoven: broken metronome (Beethoven was presented with two by Maezel in two different sizes, Maezel who also modified a piano to focus sound directly at Beethoven’s face) Beethoven put the weight incorrectly on the scale…did Czerny, Chopin, Clementi (well known as teachers, plus Chopin had the metronome at every lesson, the comments of his students of the left never strayed from the beat) Schumann’s Kinderszenen indications…ignored however I digress. Beethoven’s metronome marks for his Symphonies were by mid 19th omitted from some published scores by 1863. Not all. The Later string Quartets the same. As to whatever speed the minuet was played vs Scherzo, if Beethoven wanted a Scherzo, he would have damn well written the word. The were besides the dance form at the ballroom, Vienna had very large ones in 1807, the Theatrical Minuet (and pantomime ballet), which dances were by Beethoven’s time referred Minuet or as Tempo di Minuetto, in 3/8 time signature used in Italian minuets. The later forms of minuets dispensed with the hemiola present from the choreography in the cadences found before 1780’s as Kimiko Okamoto noted in Metrical Structure of the Minuet, however she also observed the Viennese Symphonic Minuets and the Minuets for dancing were composed identically, even though the dance steps had changed. The whole selling point of the metronome was to preserve the composer’s tempi for posterity. Yet there’s something wrong with Beethoven’s Metronome marks in general, not all are capable of performance in single beat metronome interpretation. Neither is his student, Czerny.

[@martingauthier7377]

There is at least one thing we know for sure: every single piano student has felt confused, puzzled, frustrated by some tempo marks at some point. This simply because the most basic mathematical sign ' = ' was not used properly in its true and simple meaning. 2 DOES NOT = 1, or anything else you might have in your mind. 2 = 2. Meaning the note value SHOULD equal ( = ) a number on paper = the same number on the metronome. I understand the musical tradition and all that and it is what it is. But what was the point to use an accurate device if at the end of the day everybody is even more confused and have to debate forever...

[@danaildanailov3847]

Just take Appassionata no. 23, Allegro Assai, 160 bpm, 2 beats per a quarter note. There is no other legitimate reading.

[@juanperez-z8w3p]

I think Czerny's indication for this movement was dotted quarter= 108

[@Aalii6]

👍👍

[@Renshen1957]

If there is a quick Allegro Molto, then logically there is a converse, a slow(er) Allegro Molto…

[@mustuploadtoo7543]

I have never seen anyone so interested in the tempo a piece should be played at

[@123Joack]

Then try playing slow for your teacher 😂

[@mustuploadtoo7543]

@@123Joack trying to find the correct tempo like it will lead a map to atlantis

[@Ricardo7250]

Exactly, why not just play in the tempo you are most comfortable? Or the tempo that makes the piece sound the best in your opinion? Makes no sense to put that much faith in a metronome marking

[@123Joack]

@@Ricardo7250 you can (and Wim would agree) play any piece of music in any tempo with any instrument. If you care about what the composer intended, you play the piece in whole beat. It’s not difficult

[@brendanward2991]

@@Ricardo7250 Why stop there? Why not also replace the composer's notes with notes that sound better to you?

[@ExAnimoPortugal]

What most people don't understand today is that life was just slower those days. "if you play at this tempo that symphony will be like two hours!" Yeah? It's not like people back then had smartphones and Netflix.

[@surgeeo1406]

And people have no issue spending many hours on those, so why not a concert? Movies last for hours, even the other day there was a trend of watching Schopenhauer and Barbie back to back. So I'd argue that we really don't move faster, but time just flies when you're having fun...

[@minkyukim0204]

Yes as they walked, talked and moved twice slower than now 😂

[@martingauthier7377]

@@minkyukim0204 The point is that people were used to work hard for hours and days just to achieve something that be done almost instantly today. And also artistic performances were rare events, not just casual everyday entertainment. Yes indeed people actually moved and traveled not only twice slower but even way slower from one place to an other than today, since there were no cars or airplanes. Could you imagine that. There was definitely a different perception of time.

[@minkyukim0204]

@@martingauthier7377 so are you suggesting that people actually talked and walked twice slower than us? If not, why only music have affected by the change of perspective? All the recitativo back then were twice slower or not? It seems that your logic has big leap!

[@minkyukim0204]

Yet we do have historical timings that are described ‘without any cuts’ or ‘with repeats,’ which don’t correspond to double beat!