Ep.38: The Metronome Was a Mystery to Musicians in 1887

First things first! Check out our new Kickstarter campaign (Carl Czerny School of Velocity here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/authenticsound/czernys-school-of-velocity-as-youve-never-heard-before) In this episode, we return to The Etude, the late nineteenth-century American music magazine, and look more closely at its remarkable discussions of the metronome.At first sight, the questions seem simple. Why do the tempo words printed on the metronome not match the actual tempo of musical works? Why do some of Schumann’s, Mendelssohn’s, and Chopin’s metronome marks appear too fast? And how should a pianist understand the indicated speed of difficult études?But beneath these practical questions lies a much larger problem. The answers given in The Etude often reveal a deep confusion. The writers acknowledge that nineteenth-century performance had become faster and more extreme, yet at the same time they struggle with earlier metronome marks that already seem impossible when read in the modern Single Beat way.That contradiction is central to the Whole Beat question. If musicians in the 1880s were already confused by metronome marks from earlier generations, then these sources do not solve the historical problem. They expose it.We discuss Schumann, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Godowsky, Saint-Saëns, Czerny, and the strange gap between theoretical explanations and what can actually be played at the keyboard. 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