3

So, Czerny, in his edition of Bach's two part inventions, says 138 BPM (crotchets per minute) is appropriate for the first invention:

http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/7/72/IMSLP63611-PMLP03267-Bach_Oeves_Complets_Peters_Liv_7_BWV_772-786_2748.pdf

But if I set my metronome at 138 BPM and try to count - well, it's not pretty.

Gould played it at something more like 55 BPM - but I hear you say, Gould was crazy - okay, then there is this Zelda Spellman lookalike who plays it at something like 65:

Is my (digital) metronome gone haywire? Am I reading metronome markings horribly wrong, I have forgot how to count or what?

Thank you!

Improve this question
2
  • Quich metronome check - 60 or 120 against a clock or watch.
    – Tim
    Commented Mar 7, 2015 at 13:56
  • 1
    138 certainly seems like a more appropriate quaver pulse to me. But then, I'm not the world's greatest pianist...
    – Bob Broadley
    Commented Mar 7, 2015 at 14:28

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
3

I little history lesson might be relevant here. Czerny used the fact that he was a pupil of Beethoven, and recording Beethoven's interpretation of Bach for posterity, as a major selling point. Beethoven certainly saw a few copies of Bach's music that had survived in the Imperial Court Library, but at that time, Bach's entire musical output was unknown and unplayed. Most of it had never been published, and finding a few handwritten manuscripts that had been copied (and probably altered) an unknown number of times by unknown people was not exactly a definitive record of what Bach had intended. Czerny and Beethoven had nothing to guide them beyond pure guesswork. Bach's keyboard instruments (the harpsichord and clavichord) were as obsolete and unknown as his compositions for them.

Czerny's editions of Bach are interesting as an example of an indisputably great musician (Beethoven) trying to make sense of something totally foreign and close to incomprehensible, but compared with modern editions based on (infinitely) better historical research, they tell us a lot more about Beethoven and Czerny than about Bach.

This http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Ref/BWV772-801-Ref.htm gives some idea of the amount of contemporary research - and note that new facts are still coming to light, and opinions on the Inventions and Sinfonias have changed even within the last 10 years. Beethoven and Czerny knew none of this.

Improve this answer
2
  • I don't feel this explains adequately a metronome marking that is more or less double the reasonable speed (at this point I'm beginning to suspect an engraving mistake), but this is a great post in itself. +1
    – Some Dude On The Interwebs
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 19:20
  • 1
    Beethoven put some very improbable MM marks (also too fast to be playable) on his own compositions, for example some late piano sonatas. Maybe his metronome was defective - Maelzel had only just been invented it and he was an "early adopter". A charitable explanation (given by Tovey in his edition of the sonatas) is that being completely deaf, he watched the metronome swinging and set it to match the excitement of the music in his imagination, without a reality check.
    – user19146
    Commented Mar 10, 2015 at 22:06
1

I'm sure you probably won't see this as I'm posting 7 years after first raised this issue, and the "solution" that I'm gonna mention usually gets a lot of flack from people who don't subscribe to this idea but I'll offer it up anyway.

Czerny was most likely using the metronome in a way that is described as the whole beat metronome practice. So basically this means that the beat/pulse of the music (Schlag in German and Tactus in Italian) is actually made up as binary unit containing 2 smaller subdivisions. So in the metronome number of 1/4 note = 138 as per your example, the 1/4 note represents the Schlag (beat/pulse) and the number 138 actually represents the number of binary subdivisions of the Schlag i.e. the 1/8 note. So in modern metronome reading Czerny's metronome mark would read more like 1/4 note = 69 or 1/8 = 138.

But supposing you don't care for that hypothesis of how to read the metronome, the main way in which in the 18th century composers determined tempo before the invention of the metronome was to use the tempo ordinario. Now it's a little complicated because generally speaking the tempo ordinario is 60 crochets per minute. Some authors have it faster than this (e.g. 75) and some say that it is 60 per minute but that applies to a moderato rather than allegro (which would be a little faster). Either way the tempo ordinario is the sort standard middle tempo to based everything around in relation to.

So, more specifically, if you have a 4/4 (or common time) allegro, with 2 harmonic changes per bar, and the smallest structural/fundamental notes is 16th notes (so ignoring ornaments and such), you can apply the tempo ordinario. You can also ajust accordingly depending on the character of the piece (i.e. if it's more solemn and gentle you can slow down to as far as 50 that I've seen on the odd occassion) or even go as high as 84 or 92 if it's very lively. Although that's usually reflected in the tempo word in extreme cases).

Thus your intuition that 1/4 = 55 or 65 is a good tempo is actually pretty bang on.

It's also something that I believe is true of all of czerny's metronomisation for things like mozart, beethoven, his own works, as well as pretty much all 19th century metronome marks, which if they were taken literally are either nonsensical or impossible. (e.g. Czerny's Op.299 School of Virtuosity)

If you do end up reading this, I hope it helps.

Dan

Improve this answer
1

Bach's music frequently allows a wide range of interpretations. Both Czerny's "Allegro Vivace" and his metronome mark are completely editorial of course. Bach (characteristically) didn't seem to give any indications at all. I like the idea of "Allegro Vivace", many performances strike me as drab or over-"expressive". Maybe Czerney saw q=138 as a goal to be aimed at in the spirit of his "School of velocity"!

Is that an answer? Not really. But it's as near as you're going to get, and I hope it prompts you to listen to many pianists' ideas on this piece. There are plenty on YouTube. And thank you for introducing me to a very pretty, if somewhat self-promoting, lady :-)

Here's a link to a quite individual interpretation. "Right"? What's that anyway. "Valid"? Why not?

And here's a very exhaustive exploration of the topic, including a demonstration of Czerny's literal tempo.

Improve this answer
4
  • Laurence, thanks for the suggestions and for the very interesting Schiff version. Unusual as it may be, it still seems to me that when I count them, Schiff's crotchets (not quavers!) are 55 per minute or something like that, certainly not >100. This only reinforces my suspicion that I am getting something fundamentally wrong.
    – Some Dude On The Interwebs
    Commented Mar 7, 2015 at 15:43
  • BTW your impression is right - as you can see in the description the woman is trying to sell her books and/or instructional videos - if you refer to the fact that she happens to be quite beautiful, let's just hope this will draw more adults to give a serious try at piano :P
    – Some Dude On The Interwebs
    Commented Mar 7, 2015 at 15:49
  • I dropped into OP's video at about 16:30 and she's talking about the passing tones that Schiff does here, as being written as triplets in a second version that Bach produced of the piece. But then she goes to say that the performance practice of those triplets would be shifted to fit a duple rhythm -- exactly the opposite of what Schiff does.
    – NReilingh
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 18:09
  • I don't think anybody knows for sure who wrote the triplet version. The different handwriting suggests the triplets were added to the manuscript at a later date. One possibility is the JS's son CPE Bach, who inherited the manustript after Bach's death, added them for some unknown reason. They may have just been a composition exercise for a pupil in adding passing notes to some counterpoint, and never intended for posterity.
    – user19146
    Commented Mar 10, 2015 at 22:19

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.