 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2008-08-20 09:33
After having not thought about it much at all until recently, I have learned that the metronome was invented in only 1812. Thus, never before 1812 did a single performer practice with a metronome.
For the "Historically Informed Performance" people here, do you think that practicing ancient music with a metronome can lead to an un-authentic performance? What about the concept of steady tempo itself? If Mozart or Bach or Beethoven (for most of his life), didn't have or use a metronome, would the idea of a fully steady tempo be undesirable? Were frequent changes in tempi perhaps more common and/or more perceptible than today?? And if they even were- how could we know?
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-08-20 10:32
"do you think that practicing ancient music with a metronome can lead to an un-authentic performance"
Yes. Practising any music with a metronome can lead to an unauthentic performance. Most music is not intended to be played metronomically. To take a random example, look at a Mahler score, and see how often he tells you to slow down, speed up.
The metronome is an aid to technical practice, no more no less.
Electronic tuning aids are a late twentieth century invention. Does that mean we shouldn't use a tuner to check pitch when practising Mozart, or Brahms, or Stravinsky?
...........
As another example of missing the point re authentic performance practice, I am reminded of the Mozart Festival Orchestra, who often perform in period costume, the women musicians dressed as men. But they use modern instruments, which rather shatters the visual illusion, never mind the auditory effect.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2008-08-20 16:46
We can't know for sure, and that's one of the bizarre quirks of striving for "historically accurate" performances from before the time of sound recording.
Heck, even if someone wrote a treatise on something, we have little to no way of knowing for sure if it is an accurate reflection of the times or if the author was full of crap.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: NorbertTheParrot
Date: 2008-08-20 17:08
There are some treatises (C P E Bach, Quantz) that are generally regarded as pretty authoritative.
But whatever the books might say, I think it is absurd to suppose that musicians playing before the invention of the metronome couldn't - or at least didn't - play in strict time. If they were playing rapid dance music, we can be pretty sure they did. If they were playing slow expressive arias with lots of improvised ornamentation by the soloist, we can be pretty sure they didn't.
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2008-08-20 17:16
The pendulum has been around forever. Anyone could hang a weight on a string. Furthermore, early treatises talk constantly about setting tempos and keeping ensembles together. Quantz's treatise has a table of tempos for particular movement types, keyed to the normal heartbeat.
Many if not most baroque movements are dances, the tempos of which are determined by how fast the dancers could do the steps gracefully. If you've ever played for dancers, you know that they need the tempo to be rock steady and exactly the same every time.
Ken Shaw
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Author: mrn
Date: 2008-08-21 00:16
While it's always dangerous to generalize, my ear suggests to me that much pre-metronome music was written with the notion of metric precision as an aesthetic. J.S. Bach's music stands out in this regard, as does the steady beat of basso continuo, or the Alberti bass lines and other steady accompaniment devices of the classical era.
On a larger philosophical scale, I think that it is not insignificant that the time period we are talking about roughly coincides with what is commonly referred to as the "Age of Enlightenment." During this time period, following the groundbreaking scientific work of Newton and his contemporaries, people began to see the world as clockwork, behaving according to predictable natural laws in ways that could be measured precisely. The aesthetics of the time--including those in music--were necessarily influenced by this worldview.
The mostly-post-metronome Romantic era, on the other hand, was, in large respect, a reactionary countermovement in response to Enlightenment thought. One characteristic of Romantic-era music is the frequent use of rubato (as in the piano works of Chopin), which can be viewed as a rejection of Enlightenment-era formalism.
Also, don't forget that necessity is the mother of invention. The reason why the metronome was invented in the first place is that someone of that era felt a need to create something to aid with metric precision. If this sort of precision was not important to the music of the time, the metronome might not have been invented or might not have caught on in the musical community. It could be that the ability to play at a steady beat was an even more prized skill at the time than it is today because the metronome did not exist (this is just a hypothesis, though).
Post Edited (2008-08-21 00:43)
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Author: allencole
Date: 2008-08-21 01:19
mrn, I was waiting for SOMEBODY to say that! Obviously the invention of the metronome met a need.
Isn't it also true that some pre-metronomic conducting was done by beating a staff on the floor? (kinda like Debbie Allen in "Fame") I've always heard this anecdote about the conductor who accidentally struck himself in the foot and died from the resulting infection.
To me, a 20-30 lb baton generally means metronomic time. <g>
Allen Cole
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2008-08-21 02:59
Perhaps the question is too hypothetical to have an answer.
To rephrase the question- Is it possible that the advent of using a machine to practice with (on a regular basis for our entire career) has...
Changed the way musicians think about timing?
Changed the way people practice?
Changed the results of that practice?
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2008-08-21 05:19
I think it is both beneficial and detrimental.
On the plus side, it is a very effective practice tool, and makes it quite easy for performers to see suggested tempi provided by composers.
On the minus, I don't know how much this is related to the metronome (it was probably a problem before the device came around), but I've played with a lot of people who play music with rhythmic accuracy but with total disregard to what's going on around them. Literally playing a solo passage a half beat askew from the rest of the ensemble or at a different tempo. It's general disregard for ensemble presence. One possible cause might be that they practice it at home at the written tempo, then when it's time for them to play with the ensemble they start the autopilot, exactly as practiced.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2008-08-21 11:55
Alex -
For every person I've played with who's too metronomic, I've played with hundreds whose rhythm is all over the place. Major symphony musicians like Ed Palanker and Greg Smith have written that the flaw that disqualifies auditioners the quickest, and is most frequently seen even at high-level auditions, is inaccurate rhythm.
Even when I have a piece well worked up, I'm startled when I play with a metronome at how many places are unsteady. I believe strongly that I need to know how something goes with a metronome, so that I have a clear and steady foundation that I can depart from for musical reasons.
Ken Shaw
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2008-08-21 14:16
If you think of pre-metronome music, especially that of the Baroque, it was very heavily influenced by dance and the highest compliment one can pay for performers is that they have nailed the dance affect. I have heard this not only in "real" dance music of the period, but also in opera, trio sonatas, concertos and even Bach sacred works and in the last case it has been absolutely thrilling.
The affect was much more important than the metronome and with the gradual loss of the feeling of dance affect in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the metronome became, I suspect, inevitable. Quantz bases all of his tempos off a "tempo ordinaire" for the heart beat, which some have calculated as 80 bpm. Obviously, there is a lot of leeway, but some of it holds up very well. I also think that a steady pulse would allow for some rubato within measures which, if I remember correctly, Quantz discusses at some length. (I don't have Quantz handy, sorry.)
Best regards,
Mrs. Ken (Mary)
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Author: Tobin
Date: 2008-08-21 15:04
Hello Alex,
"...but I've played with a lot of people who play music with rhythmic accuracy but with total disregard to what's going on around them. Literally playing a solo passage a half beat askew from the rest of the ensemble or at a different tempo."
This isn't a flaw of metronomic practice...it's a flaw of good musicianship, ensemble, and listening! ( A complete lack of those three!)
The benefits of metronomic practice far outweigh the negatives. I would rather have to train a student in the nuances of rubato (when they are rhythmically strong) then how to be rhythmically accurate. Rhythmic accuracy starts the very first day they begin playing (but not necessarily with a metronome!).
James
Gnothi Seauton
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Author: Sean.Perrin
Date: 2008-08-24 17:34
Why do classical performers always live in the past?
Did you know that the toothbrush was not made widely available until the mid 1800s? I'm constantly afraid to brush my teeth in fear of ruining the authenticity of my performance. If musicians cleaned their teeth with soot back then, I'm going to do that from now on to make sure to have the most authentic performance possible!
Give me a break. It's the 21st century. MANY more things have changed since 1800 since the introduction of the metronome and the toothbrush.
(It should also be noted that such inventions as the tooth brush have led to increased life expectancy. Is it unreasonable to believe that the invention of the metronome led to improved rhythm?)
I sometimes get the feeling that some musicians actually wished that it was 1860 instead of 2008. Well, Emerson has the answer to those who are so envious:
"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till."
The "plot of ground" is 2008. Do with it what you will... with or without your metronome.
Founder and host of the Clarineat Podcast: http://www.clarineat.com
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