Wim Winters, 2025
'This evil is caused by the changed times, which want to grasp everything on the wing and want to conquer by storm. Where that attitude is justified, it is very good and useful, such as railways on which one would want to fly if it were already possible. Nowadays one rushes ahead in many things, and music is no exception.' 1
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Gottried Wilhelm Fink[/caption]
We are in Leipzig 1839. Gottried Wilhelm Fink, in the winter of his career, feverishly wielded the only weapon at his disposal to halt an evolution in musical performances that he would describe as barbaric. The old tradition, that of Vienna from Beethoven's time, in which 'The characteristic, the expression fired by Truth and Authenticity, the Aesthetic Beauty that sweeps the listener with his whole being without any attempt to surprise him or to impress through effects, has long since disappeared.' Fink cut through the new reality with surgical precision. Mozart's music was 'spoiled' by 'exaggerated tempi' and it did not stop with Mozart alone: 'Many have already sacrificed Beethoven's finales to mad exaggerations, without anyone calling them to account for such childish behavior.' Something Beethoven himself could not have done, his generation simply did not have the technique for it: '…they did not want to package Art exclusively in fast passages and overwhelming 'fiorituras', as is possible nowadays through improved technical skills and the ease with which one overcomes technical difficulties.'
Fink was not blind to the reason why musicians massively adopted this trend. The modern public wanted nothing else. But he placed many musicians in the same light: 'The vanity of virtuosity has placed itself above everything else.' Although the younger generation knew no better: 'Such things are like a plague: they spread and infect even the healthy. (…) The feeling for what is right is lost through this frequently repeated habit … There is no longer a desire to inspire, but only to blind, so that the public calls it magic.'
Fink's article breathes pent-up irritation, a string of accusations that the author cuts from the musical social fabric without anesthesia and still gripped by surgical tweezers shamelessly shows to the world: 'It sometimes borders on pure madness, so incomprehensibly wild and barbaric is the manner in which Mozart's works are often treated, whereby all pleasure is spoiled while one oneself thinks to increase enjoyment.'
Fink was not alone. Already in 1821 the Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review reported in London that the visit of guest conductor Georg Kiesewetter, newly appointed vice-president of the Viennese Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and regularly Schubert's partner at the piano, had caused a minor shockwave at the London orchestra:
'Mister Kiesewetter insisted, during rehearsals of Beethoven's and Haydn's symphonies with the Philharmonic Concert, as we understand, strongly that they be played more slowly than this orchestra was accustomed to doing (...).' 2
A trend that apparently became widespread very quickly: '(...) we have heard very old, but capable musicians say that the unbridled urge for speed has become so great of late that even first-class violinists sometimes become confused if they are not fully familiar with the passage.' According to the author, the solution was to encourage composers to metronome their works. That would, once and for all, put an end to all confusion. Fink had the same thought. He devised a plan to ask old musicians to metronome works by deceased composers. It would ultimately remain with just one contribution. But what a contribution! The Prague composer Wenzel Johann Tomaschek (1774-1850), somewhat forgotten today, but in those days a figure from the old times, came forward with a complete metronomization of Mozart's Don Giovanni. Tomaschek had, in 1791, heard Don Giovanni in Prague, performed by the same orchestra with which Mozart had premiered his opera. Whether his tempi now truly reflect those of Mozart or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is that Fink published them as an illustration of how much slower tempi were in the past compared to 1839.
Right. How much slower…
That is particularly strange, because today we read about Tomaschek's tempi that they 'were generally poorly received by academics and conductors, because they do not take into account the character and drama of the music … and especially because they are unreasonably fast.'3
But… did Fink not publish those same figures to demonstrate how much slower Mozart originally was? Did one play in 1839 then much faster than what as of 2025 is already considered impossible?
That Tomaschek's metronome markings are really problematic is proven by the performance Roger Norrington gave of them. Norrington, a well-known advocate for taking tempi according to the indicated metronome markings, takes a slower tempo in no fewer than 27 movements compared to Tomaschek4. J.E. Gardiner, who operates along exactly the same lines as Norrington, shows the same pattern in his live performance from 1994. And, for those familiar with Gardiner's work, his Don Giovanni is still labeled as breakneck speed today. But apparently not fast enough for Tomaschek and Fink. As an example:
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Andante (overture): Gardiner: 80 / Tomaschek: 92.
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The following allegro molto: Gardiner: 122 / Tomaschek: 132.
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The famous canzonetta almost half: Gardiner: 50 / Tomaschek: 80
The 'slow' Tomaschek tempi for Fink oblige singers to maintain a constant speed of 6 to 9 syllables per second. For the aria 'Mille torbidi pensieri', we are supposed to assume that the average singer in 1839 had no problem whatsoever with even 11 syllables per second. You can experience this stunt yourself right now: count aloud from 1 to 11. And try to do that within 1 second. And then 20 times in a row.
But we're not done yet. Those impossible 11 syllables per second are only the starting point of our problem. If we read Fink literally, we must indeed assume that musicians in 1839 played and sang much faster than this. And not by a little, given the strong language used. But how could that be? The answer of many: they played in smaller spaces, smaller orchestras, different instruments, ... whereby we are supposed to simply assume that this is sufficient to allow singers in 1839 to easily sing up to 15 syllables per second? Those same ingredients no longer work today, because we have been performing music from that era for decades now in every conceivable historical context. And we accept that our young musicians already leave their conservatory studies with chronic injuries. And still it is not enough. Still not fast enough.
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Adolf Bernard Marx[/caption]
One last handful from the seemingly endless basket full of 19th-century speed warnings. Warnings, not from a feigned sense of romanticism, whereby romantic for the modern tempo scholar apparently is synonymous with slower, but from the perspective of authenticity, of how it, even for the 19th-century musician, 'in the past' really was. We leave Leipzig and travel to Berlin in 1863, where the still well-known today Adolf Bernard Marx (1795-1866) prepares the publication of his book on Beethoven. Marx had previously written for the Berliner Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung. His pieces were appreciated by no less than Beethoven himself. Befriended with Mendelssohn and many others, contemporary of Moscheles and Czerny, he stood his whole life in the center of music. In 1863 he knew exactly what he was talking about when he wrote that all doubts about the correct tempo 'have been eliminated by Mälzel's metronome, with which an absolute measure for a movement can be given.'5 In 1863, the Italian tempo markings 'have changed their original meaning. The tempo is taken much faster today.' When Italian tempo markings in 1863 were taken faster than, say, in 1825, the same applies to the metronome markings that are in any case related to them.
But how much is much? Marx gives us a unique answer to that, an answer that, given the pen from which it flowed and the total absurdity it sketches, could have, perhaps should have, directed musicologists' gaze toward a different metronome reading for a century. About the finale of the A major sonata Op. 101, he writes that 'for an accomplished player it is not impossible to play this passage twice as fast as it actually should be; but can the listeners then still perceive all the voices and feel those that form the polyphonic texture?'
Twice as fast as it should be... twice as fast then as relative to the metronome markings that 'as everyone knows' eliminate all doubts once and for all? And it doesn't stop with that one sonata. Players who are 'driven by pride' must be asked the following question: 'If you really,' we must ask them, 'play the Finales of the Sonatas, Op. 26, 27 no. 2, 53, 57, twice as fast as they actually should be played, are the senses then truly more brilliant?'
Now I invite the reader to search for these finales on YouTube. And to make use of the option that YouTube offers to set the speed to x2. The original tempo need not be checked, even though in many cases it will be slower than the figures we have for these sonatas from Czerny or Moscheles or others. What you then hear is, according to modern musicology, in that doubled speed, with absolute certainty the result of how Beethoven was performed in 1863. The 15 syllables of Fink evaporate in the radiant heat of the absurdity that arises here. Where Fink still spoke of barbaric performances because of exaggerated tempi, we know from Marx that in certain cases this was even twice as fast as originally intended. Anyone who hears Lisitsa play the finale of the Moonlight opus 27/2, for example, will immediately realize that in her version she is already at a limit. Let alone being able to double this tempo. But in absurdity, sometimes the solution also awakens. As here. For from the modern tempo one cannot double. In the cases Marx lists, that is only possible when one starts from… half. Let us dwell on that, as a conclusion, for a moment.
In the book, Fixing the Beethoven Mistake, a Paradigm shift in Classical Music, to which we are currently putting the finishing touches, several chapters will be devoted to this unstoppable 19th-century evolution which, to this day, is still ongoing. The reader will also be able to discover, through a hundred quotations, what the metronome really meant to the 19th-century composer. That the function of the metronome consisted primarily of fixing tempi with absolute precision is a finding that has been imbued with an almost disarming evidence. Yet we no longer see it this way today: the at first sight absurd tempi have replaced that original image of precise tempi with abstract figures whose only purpose could have been to drive musicians to ever faster tempi. As the well-known conductor Paavo Järvi recently said in a beautiful BBC documentary: Beethoven's tempi are so abnormally fast because he predicted the 'Wagner effect'.6 His metronome markings would thus have to be regarded as a visionary and ingenious act of something, of which at his time there was not the slightest indication. That statement fits perfectly with how we view those enigmatic figures today, but seems strange when you plug those words back into the original context. Only with Beethoven. The only thing he was really concerned about were his tempi. Everyone who was close to him knew that the question would be the first one when visiting after attending a concert of his music: what were the tempi? Barely four months before his death, the composer of the 9th Symphony wrote this to his publisher Schott:
'The metronome markings will be sent to you very soon. Please wait for them. In our age, such indications are certainly necessary. Moreover, I have received letters from Berlin in which it is mentioned that the first performance of the symphony [the 9th] was received with enthusiastic applause, which I largely attribute to the metronome markings.'7
We thus see a phenomenon in which the metronome was introduced at a moment when tempi were already becoming drastically faster and composers, not least among them, massively deployed the apparatus to fix their ideal tempo. Moving forward in time, we read that performances of (by then) old music – a new trend, by the way – were often performed at absurd tempi. With reference to how much slower it was originally.
How can we reconcile all of this? The solution is simpler than a good article deserves just before the climax at the end. So first this: personal experience. On paper, the impossibility of a tempo is difficult to demonstrate. Abstract figures mean very little. But whoever can play a little piano and wants to experience firsthand how absurd a modern interpretation of historical metronome markings really is, I advise you to pause reading, take out or download Czerny's famous (infamous) Opus 299 – Schüle der Gelaufigkeit – and play the first study. It consists of very simple scales in C major, playable at sight for almost anyone. And then take a metronome or download a metronome app. [half note] = 108 is the end goal. That's more than 14 (!) notes per second. The following etudes require the same speed, some even more. For those who approach this experiment with some suspicion, because we so often hear that these tempi are nothing more than target values, I like to quote from the original preface. We read along with Czerny:
'The following exercises are intended exclusively to develop, increase and maintain this aspect of virtuosity, provided they are practiced daily as the first thing, in the very fast indicated tempo, with attention to all other rules of beautiful and correct execution, after they have been thoroughly mastered.'
In tempo, then. And, perhaps not insignificantly in light of this article: in repertoire lists of 19th-century piano schools, this etude is given as for … beginners. Not a word about unattainable speeds.
Or, for the Bach lovers, play the first invention in C major. Czerny, in his own words following the tempi that Beethoven used, writes [quarter note] = 138 for it. For reference: Gustav Leonhardt plays it half as fast. And, another reference: this is almost the same tempo that Beethoven gave for the fugue from his Hammerklavier sonata. And which we today consider impossible.
If Czerny is not sufficient, take a look at composers such as Kalkbrenner, Moscheles, Ries, De Méreaux, Alkan, Thalberg, Schumann, ... the list is endless. Often this metronome problem is reduced to a few Chopin etudes and Beethoven. The reality is different. And larger. Chopin's etudes belong today to the repertoire of top virtuosos for the simple reason that we try to perform them at double tempo. The same applies to Beethoven. But if this music is already problematic in light of their original ideal tempi – which they are – then the problem becomes even more proportions. We may well have forgotten all that insane music that touring 19th-century virtuosos constantly spewed out and never play again, but it is there. And in light of that, Chopin is after all no more than a brilliant update of what Cramer or Clementi already wrote. That may be a shock for many to read it that way, but do the exercise here too: compare a Chopin etude with one by Liszt.
[playlist order="DESC" ids="42516"]The point is: whoever truly wants to return to the composer's original intention faces an enormous problem. The metronome markings form a granite gateway that has remained closed until now. We claim that we have the key, just as Jordi Savall still did recently in an interview regarding his upcoming Beethoven series in Vienna: 'Beethoven's tempi are perfect. You just have to study a bit more'8, the reality is that these voices, if only on the basis of how we view the tempi of that time today, do not penetrate within the walls of old Vienna. They ring out clearly on the outside, but reflect in the wrong direction. That may sound somewhat presumptuous as a claim at first glance, but is it not the case that the tempo choice is all-determining? For everyone. Andras Schiff will not play his Beethoven slower or faster in New York than in Amsterdam. And for good reason. The choice of a tempo underlies every interpretation. Anyone who tampers with that changes everything: articulation, phrasing, accentuation and, most importantly: the character of the piece. That is sensitive, for everyone. But also for the composer. Czerny described this phenomenon as follows, entirely in line with what Beethoven wrote to his publisher:
'Every musical piece produces only then its correct effect when it is played in the exact tempo prescribed by the composer, and every, even the slightest deviation from it—whether faster or slower—can often completely destroy the feeling, beauty and intelligibility of the piece.'9
And that is precisely why this entire 'discussion' is so sensitive. Music is emotion and that emotion is shaped in part, or rather, its foundation is laid by… the tempo choice. It is no different. And if a slight difference is already capable of changing an entire composition in character and color, how much more so when what happens when we no longer read all these old metronome markings as we do today, but consider the metronome as a mechanical pendulum? Not the single tick, but the tick-tock, the back-and-forth beat corresponds to the note value of the famous MM. Not 1,2,3, but 1-and 2-and 3-and. Just like the tactus, the arsis/thesis, how we still teach music theory, the principle of time determination, the duality of so much, day and night, systole-diastole, …
This thesis is not new. Already in the 1950s it was speculated about. In 1980 the still well-known book by Talsma10 appeared. What we propose in our Beethoven, and later also in the 600-page book, is partly based on the same thesis. At the same time, we can now, with all respect for what someone like Talsma as a musical archaeologist has personally excavated, also better survey the pit he uncovered. What Dr. Lorenz Gadient, co-author of the forthcoming book, already did in 2010 with his publication Takt und Pendelschlag, was a first step to correct a number of what are—for us today—evident errors, so to speak. At the same time, the same thesis is described and documented from a richer context, going back to the 16th and 17th centuries, to Mersenne, and from there taking the approach to what would ultimately be the introduction of the metronome. We now add our musical experiments to this as well. At the moment I write these words, the first collection of 9 CDs with part 1 of Beethoven's complete keyboard works is being released. We launch part 2 in November, part 3 in November 2026. In June this year we will add 5 CDs with music by Chopin. Everything played from this whole-beat reading of metronome markings, we call this Whole Beat or: the WBMP – Whole Beat Metronome Practice.
There are still many aspects that are important to discuss, many questions that you as a reader undoubtedly have and remain unanswered in the brief scope of this article. The book will answer many of them. But what you can do now is… listen. We have been able to send the symphonies to no fewer than 31 countries. And from the responses we learn one thing: give this new experience some time. Listen a few times, openly and without prejudice to the result. Via the CDs or via Bandcamp, where you can listen to everything completely free three times. We know Ludwig's music so well, are so steeped in modern performances that it is difficult to return to something slower. You will miss something at first. But something wonderful takes its place. Because what this tempo does is nothing other than reconstructing a timeline. A timeline on which Beethoven scattered all the brilliant ingredients that he knew would have an overwhelming effect on his audience. On you too, then. It is that timeline that we today compress so much that many of those ingredients rush past untasted. Should you experience a quasi insurmountable shock at the first listening session, perhaps the renowned musicologist Clive Brown can help you. He wrote the following in 1999:
'Good taste is not an immutable property; it is in a state of constant change. What eighteenth- and nineteenth-century musicians considered tasteful might seem unnatural or grotesque to us on a first hearing, and they would undoubtedly have found the style of modern performances strange and probably unsatisfactory in many respects. Such considerations may prompt us to examine whether we cannot experiment with more radical and bolder approaches to the performance of familiar repertoire, (…) By doing so, we may perhaps recapture some of the excitement of hearing great masterworks for the first time, (…)'11
Eksel, 25 March 2025
©Wim Winters, 2025
1 All quotes G.W.Fink, Ueber das Bedürfniss, Mozart's Hauptwerke unserer Zeit so metronomisirt zu liefern, wie der Meister selbst sie ausführen liess, Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung, 19ten Juni 1839, pp. 477 - 481 2Anonymous, Maelzel's Metronome , The Quarterly Musical Magazine and Review, Vol. III, 1821, p. 302-305 3 Magnus Tessing Schneider, The original portrayel of Mozart's Don Giovanni, Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera, p.21 4 Stephan James Mould, Curating Opera, University of Sydney, October 2015 5 A.B.Marx, Anleitung sum Vortrag Beethovenischer Klavierwerke, Berlin 1863, Neue Auflage, Leipzig 1903 , p.70 6 Paavo Järvi, No Precise Tempo Without Beethoven? | Part 7 of the film project A World Without Beethoven? (accessed 25.03.2025) 7 Letter to Schott's Söhne, Anderson, p.1325 (letter 1545) – translation by the author 8 Jordi Savall, Jordi Savall bringt Beethoven im Originalklang nach Wien https://www.sn.at/kultur/musik/jordi-savall-beethoven-originalklang-wien-173939239 (25.03.2025) 9 Carl Czerny, Pianoforte School, Cocks & C°, London, 1839, part I, p. 157 10 Willem Retze Talsma, Wiedergeburt der Klassiker, Wort und Welt Verlag, Innsbruck, 1980 11 Clive Brown, Classical and Romantic Performing Practice 1750-1900, Oxford University Press, p.632