Talk:Metronome

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Contents 1 CD players help modify the metronome. 2 Beethoven and the metronome 3 Better Pictures 4 Standard metronome markings. 5 So how does a Maelzel metronome work?

[edit] CD players help modify the metronome.

count out loud  
try a variety of tempos  
put the beat somewhere else besides the 'one'  

subdivide!

(theres an x-box game called metronome) wish there was a article on it - im lazy..

>>There's also a Japanese band named metronome. They're fantastic. メトロノーム http://www.artpop.org/meto21/

[edit] Beethoven and the metronome

I edited out the second part of the following statement: "Ludwig van Beethoven was the first composer to indicate metronome markings in his music, in 1817, although the extremely fast markings he put on some pieces led some modern scholars to suspect his metronome was quite inaccurate."

First of all, this notion did not come from any modern scholars; it comes from his 19th-century biographer Anton Schindler--the same one who forged entries in Beethoven's conversation books.

Secondly, Beethoven had two metronomes, one of which still exists. Both were the familiar pyramid-shaped Maelzel type with the double pendulum design stolen from Winckel (by the way, I'm glad to see that this article gets that story right). That type of metronome is astonishingly reliable--the British music critic Peter Stadlen once took several such metronomes and tried tampering with them in any way he could (putting sand or other gunk in the mechanism, etc.) to get them to malfunction. He found that he could alter the tempo by a few percent, but any interference more severe than that would make them stop working entirely.

Finally, there are only a few works in which fast metronome markings are controversial, such as the first movement of the "Hammerklavier" (piano) sonata, op. 106. Its marking is uncharacteristically fast for that type of movement, but I have heard it played at that tempo by the contemporary pianist Ursula Oppens in a most convincing manner--so it is not only physically possible (and would have been somewhat less difficult on a fortepiano), but musically plausible.

The real controversy has been over the slow movements, which in the German Romantic tradition have sometimes been stretched out and played at nearly half the tempo Beethoven indicated. This ultra-solemn, trance-like approach had enormous mystical appeal and some conductors (e.g. Furtwaengler) and string quartets (e.g. Busch) made careers based on it. As a musician I have to respect the effectiveness of that approach, which might be even more effective if combined with recreational drug use. In terms of cultural history, it obviously resonated with deeply-felt notions of German identity.

But that is at best a "special use" of the music for nearly (or during the Third Reich, actually) propagandistic purposes; it isn't what Beethoven wrote. His music "works" and "conveys a meaning" when played at many different tempi, but Beethoven complained in his letters that other people often got his tempi wrong when he didn't supervise their performances, and that was why he was so enthusiastic about the metronome. DSatz 15:42, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I hardly think this is an appropriate occasion for such weaselly and unsupported nationalist/racist smears against musicians. It is clearly documented that lots of German or German-speaking musicians also took faster or more moderate tempos, indeed some of Furtwaengler's and the Busch quartet's tempos are remarkably fast. I suppose one would not want to go as far as to say that the enormously slow slow movements of Solomon's Beethoven recordings were a product of deeply-felt notions of London East End Jewish identity... This sort of thing is offensive and over-generalised nonsense. --Tdent (talk) 17:50, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Better Pictures

I think this entry would be improved by pictures of the first metronomes, as well as at least one made by Mälzel. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lnesseler (talk • contribs) 19:17, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Standard metronome markings.

I'm an amateur musician and own a digital metronome. My instructor told me I should increase tempo one "notch" at a time. Apparently on a standard metronome, the notches are not a constant distance apart in BPM, whereas my digital one could go 1 BPM at a time, creating non-standard tempos. After checking wikipedia and googling for some time I finally found a picture in a catalog that was large enough to read the dial. Standard metronome markings seem to be (based on this one picture)

• 2 at a time from 40 to 60:

40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60

• 3 at a time from 60 to 72:

60 63 66 69 72

• 4 at a time from 72 to 120:

72 76 80 84 88 92 96 100 104 108 112 116 120

• 6 at a time from 120 to 144:

120 126 132 138 144

• 8 at a time from 144 to 216

144 152 160 168 176 184 192 200 208 216

I think this information ought to be in wikipedia (or somewhere on the web), but am afraid that it might be discounted as trivia. Where in Wikipedia is an appropriate place to put it?

Also, is there any music historian out there that can document / cite the historical reasons for these choices? Also, do the standard markings go faster than 216 or slower than 40 on any metronomes? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.203.191.61 (talk) 20:32, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] So how does a Maelzel metronome work?

I came to this page looking for a description of how Maelzel's orignal metronome actually worked, and I'm not really any the wiser. Presumably there's some kind of escapement powering the pendulum, but how does does it work, and is the same mechanism used today? A diagram and description of the guts of the thing would be nice - possible it should be its own page, because the description of the workings one particular type of metronome is separate topic to the concept of metronomes in general. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.199.85.27 (talk) 23:24, 6 May 2008 (UTC)