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!

@DismasZelenka

5 күн бұрын

Exactly. He obsesses about tempo and note values, but says nothing about rhythm. He simply doesn't understand that you count an alla breve two in a bar, not four; and in a 3/4 movement, Allegro molto e vivace, with no note smaller than a quarter, you count one in a bar, not three (even if it is called Menuetto).

@laggeman1396

5 күн бұрын

@@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!

One word: Planté (1839-1934)

@AuthenticSound

2 күн бұрын

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

Күн бұрын

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.)

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.

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.

Beethoven's metronome marks for Tempo di menuetto in his Septet op. 20 (1799) was quarter = 120. For Tempo di Menuetto in his eighth symphony (1812) it was quarter = 126. Why did he call the third movement of his first symphony (1800) Menuetto, Allegro molto e vivace, and give it the MM dotted half = 108? Any thoughts? How does this relate to the tempo words for minuet movements in Mozart and, especially, Haydn? More background needed. As for Czerny and alla breve, he tells us in op.500 part 1 that the cut C sign means "that we must play the whole piece as quick again, as we should do if the time was indicated only by C". So he is being consistent in saying a cut time allegretto should be played allegro molto. The same goes for the adagio first movement of the Moonlight sonata: "The alla breve measure being indicated, the whole must be played in moderate Andante time." It is the difference between a 4-beat rhythm and a 2-beat rhythm. Alberto is indeed playing op.31.1 last movement at a very relaxed 4/4 allegretto!

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

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

Hi Wim, have you ever looked at tempo markings of *marching music*? Eg this Erzherzog Albrecht march at half note = 114: kzread.info/dash/bejne/fWhrmNyNfrLcdZM.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?

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?

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

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

Can someone sum this up?

@laggeman1396

6 күн бұрын

😂 I don't think so.

@JuliaCCCP

5 күн бұрын

Here you go 13:23 and 16:36

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.

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

7 күн бұрын

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

@Renshen1957

6 күн бұрын

@@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.

@DismasZelenka

6 күн бұрын

And of course, back then, there was no need for Lentos or Graves or Adagios or even Andantes. Allegro, allegro molto, or presto, were quite slow enough.

@Renshen1957

6 күн бұрын

@@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.

@DismasZelenka

6 күн бұрын

@@Renshen1957 A lot of research has been done on baroque and later eighteenth-century dance - as danced. Not nearly so simple as one might like to think. Beethoven wrote Menuetto, Allegro molto e vivace. Haydn had different minuet speeds in his op.76 and 77 string quartets., menuetto (no tempo word), allegretto, allegro ma non troppo, allegro, presto, menuetto ma non troppo presto (!). In his earlier op.33 string quartets he had 3/4 scherzos instead of minuets (allegretto, allegro). When Beethoven wanted Tempo di Menuetto he said so and his MM marks, around quarter = 120, are far slower than for the Menuetto in the first symphony (dotted half = 108). Not only were minuets actually danced at different speeds (Mozart comments on this), but also when they were purely instrumental pieces they were often played faster than they were danced, sometimes so fast that they would have been impossible to dance to. Putting Italian tempo words on the metronome scale was against Maelzel's original idea, and the way they are positioned is downright misleading. Largo, lento, grave, adagio, in whatever order, are still understood as slow tempi. I don't understand the point of your comment. Your last sentence is incomprehensible.

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.

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

6 күн бұрын

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

@MasmorraAoE

5 күн бұрын

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.

2 күн бұрын

@@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.

2 күн бұрын

@@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

2 күн бұрын

@@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.

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.

6 күн бұрын

👏👏

@AlbertoSegovia.

6 күн бұрын

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.

👍👍

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

@user-mw9uq1rk3f

Күн бұрын

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

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

Did you find the moment or period where the confusion started

@AuthenticSound

2 күн бұрын

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

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...

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

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

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

@123Joack

7 күн бұрын

Then try playing slow for your teacher 😂

@mustuploadtoo7543

7 күн бұрын

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

@Ricardo7250

7 күн бұрын

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

7 күн бұрын

@@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

7 күн бұрын

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

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

6 күн бұрын

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

4 күн бұрын

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

@martingauthier7377

4 күн бұрын

@@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

3 күн бұрын

@@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

3 күн бұрын

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