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What is the logic of your argument? According to Czerny, an alla breve marked allegretto is allegretto when counted two beats in a bar (half-note = 96), but allegro molto counted as four beats in a bar (quarter = 192). Therefore a 3/4 menuetto, with the indication allegro molto e vivace, counted as one beat in a bar (dotted half = 108), becomes an allegretto tempo di menuetto counted as three beats in a bar (quarter = 324)? Isn't this the reverse? The anomaly can be explained, if I understand you, by the fact that around 1815 Beethoven wrote to a friend about getting rid of the nonsensical Italian tempo words altogether and replacing them with numeric metronome marks. Thus for Beethoven already in 1800 (before metronomes existed) only the word 'menuetto' was a tempo indication, and 'allegro molto e vivace' merely indicated character. Or perhaps it was a joke, a scherzo, being played on people (like many of the commenters on your earlier video) who thought that allegro molto e vivace actually meant very fast and lively?

Is it perfectly clear and out of discussion that early metronomes were exactly based on bpm like today's? Not that they were inaccurate or broken, but just different, like Celsius vs Fahrenheit...?

I never thought Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Bach, Brahms, Chopin (to name a few) weren't human. I just thought they were very, very good at what they did. I have no desire to bring them down to my level!

You hit the nail on the head with this short.

I definitely prefer the original Chopin tempo.

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

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

I would love to know if Glenn Gould spite the sun? Not sure if he was an example of egotism, he corrected Bach, Beethoven and make horrible comments about Mozart I never was able to listen to the composer always is playing Gould No doubt was quite a sample and is possible to ask Leonard Bernstein with a comment before the concert in Carnegie hall that “he wasn’t responsible for that concert” Still I have time to learn all the adoration that there is for Gould

Hi Wim, have you ever looked at tempo markings of *marching music*? Eg this Erzherzog Albrecht march at half note = 114: ruclips.net/video/K476zTNOvE0/видео.html . The speed of walking kind of dictates the tempo. At WB speed it would become a 'slow march'... Or eg Beethoven's Yorkscher Marsch at quarter note = 192 would become a very slow march.. Thoughts?

My opinion is that if you are playing someone else's music (in regards to classical music mostly), it should be done as accurately to the original piece as humanly possible, taking no personal liberties

I almost spat out my food when I heard that slow intpretation

One word: Planté (1839-1934)

Now this is an ABRSM grade 8 exam piece.

Did you find the moment or period where the confusion started

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...

Excellent documentation and evidence as always. 👍 "... Hammerklavier, is typically performed in 40-45 minutes, but the length can vary depending on the performer's interpretation." I'm constantly amazed by how consistently my personal preferences for performances of pieces like this is about 20-30% faster than Whole Beat interpretation, and the pieces are often recorded at those faster tempos. I am a musician with a Performance Degree, and it's not just a matter of familiarity with the music that has shaped my preferences. Perhaps it's related to the difference in hearing a live performance versus a recorded one. 🤔

When I chose prelude and fugue in fm for my diplcm exam, I didn’t even notice that those years were one of the darkest points in my life. Passing the exam and looking back, I am so impressed that Winters reminds me of those bittersweet moments.

Moscheles gave a tempo of crotchet 126 for the Allegro con Brio of the first movement. And by this he meant 126 crotchets per minute, In his piano method he writes: "So, when the composer marks quaver = 60 on the metronome, this indicates a movement where there are only 60 eighth notes in a minute, or one eighth note per second. "(Translated from French). In other words, according to Moscheles, friend and contemporary of Beethoven himself, this speed is ridiculously slow.

Gould was so erratic, that in the most of his performances he just wanted to scandalize the "good society". But the piano music is not for such purposes. In the same class is Pogorelich- at the end, they both disintegrate at unbelievable scale.

Richter and Rachmaninoff were, without doubt, the two greatest pianists ever on record. We are not "old fans"... we have ears. Sviatoslav Richter is just out of any competition... and that is. To compare Richter and Gould? No sense at all. Gould plays his vision of the composer. Richter play what is written by the composer. But because Gould is not a skillful composer, he often ridiculed himself. Gould is a wonderful pianist, influential, but he does not possess nor the Richter's vision, nor the Richter virtuosity, nor the Richter's vast repertoire. If you are not able to follow the Richter's logic? Do not speak nonsenses at all. "Specialist" you are... Schiff and Richter? OMG... Richter has a vision, a form. The rest of your show? Just play "notes". And are unable to understand the whole piece.

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

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!

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.

This is my favourite Beethoven sonata, and I have played it in full. The speed of the furst movement sounds totally bizzare. The music is ruined at this speed. It's marked Allegro Con Brio. Not much brio here.

This seems to be at Moscheles' marking of minim 108, interpreted with the double beat hypothesis, giving 54 minims per minute. 108 minims per minute is not really all that fast. This, at half that speed, is ridiculously slow. Sorry, but I had to say it. EDIT...Also, Moscheles explicitly says, in the Method he co authored with Fetis, that a metronome mark of, say crotchet 80, means 80 crotchet beats per minute. So Moscheles own metronome marking minin 108 means, according to Moscheles himself, 108 minims per minute. Not, as here, 54 minins per minute.

Hi do u have apple music that i can listen to? Thanks

Hi, Wim! I went to read the blog and to see the Directions, but I cannot find it anywhere on your website. What happened to it? ps. I got my Beethoven!!

what is the correct way to practice this ? first with each hand and then together, or straight up with 2 hands ?

This is not serious. Lang Lang uses time technology to accelerate the tempo. He would never play at such a tempo in concert !

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.

A scherzo is a piece of music characterized by a fast tempo and lively rhythm, bro

Hell, even if one CAN play these works at the speeds of these historical MM markings, why would one want to? Finesse, style, breathing, nuance, articulation, emotion, humor - all of it goes out the window at those speed. These magnificent works become simply a series of notes and walking bass lines, demonstrations of technical facility as an end in themselves. Impressive, but emotionally and musically dull. And the perversion applies not to a handful of errant markings easily ignored for being outliers, but to a seeming decades-long tradition of defining anything faster Andante as essentially "at the limit of human endurance". Together it makes no sense.

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.

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

As I have said in the past, you are correct. Unfortunately so many just don't want to except the facts. You are an extraordinary individual and one day your work will be mainstream.

Good practice tempo.

Great men teach freely (e.g.Liszt) sharing their insights. Thank you for continuing these master classes that will be appreciated in many years from now whilst your hair is not even grey! Also thanks to Ana for her understanding and support.

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

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

Presto agitato: plays it like its adagio funebre

First playing just isn’t agitato

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

Can someone sum this up?

No way. This is a total disrespect to the composer 😡

Is this clavichord @390?

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.

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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.

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.