Ep.10: The Man Who DOUBLED Beethoven’s Speed

In this episode, Stefan and I return to Adolf Bernhard Marx, one of the most influential musical thinkers of the 19th century. Marx wasn’t just a commentator on Beethoven—he stood close enough to the early Romantic world to watch performance culture change in real time. And what he recorded is astonishing.Marx describes pianists who played the finales of Beethoven sonatas twice as fast as they were meant to be played—sometimes even more. We explore what he actually meant, how this fits the broader trend of accelerating tempos in the 19th century, and what it tells us about the lost performance world Beethoven knew.Along the way we talk about:• whether Marx wrote from a single- or whole-beat worldview• the moment musicians began to outperform the music• how virtuosity and audience-pleasing warped Beethoven interpretation• why the metronome originally ended all confusion—and why it no longer does• how Marx, Czerny, and early witnesses heard Beethoven’s music change around themIt’s a surprising, sometimes shocking dive into a source that modern scholarship often misreads. And it leads to an uncomfortable but unavoidable question:If Beethoven’s own world already struggled with speed… what happened afterward? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit wimwinters.substack.com/subscribe