In our time he would probably use modern computer technology to compose music.
That’s a heck of a stretch.
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As a internet phenomenon, it sort of reminds me of the 432 Hz cult.
The argument from the perspective of the wind section and from singers seems persuasive, but all the theory I know comes from twoset.
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“Oh it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk round my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers.”
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Thanks, that was a strange thing to learn of.
I wondered if it was gonna be a reference to the belief that many very talented Black girls on shows like American Idol have a tendency to go either flat or sharp (don’t recall) on really high notes because the ribbon tweeters in Peavey speakers goes either sharp or flat (don’t recall) as they age. And according to the music teacher what told this to me, Peaveys are the norm in small Black churches.
I used to have a 1904 “upright grand” that was built for somewhere closer to 400 Hz. The tuner was very insistent that if we ever did wanna bring it up to 440 Hz, that we should do so in steps over a couple years. I think we had it around 420 Hz, and it sounded amazing. Didn’t think to get a before and after on my DNA, though.
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While I wouldn’t want to engage with a reddit “debate”, that post does make a good point that if you know how long a piece originally took to play, then there is no mystery – you can just divide the duration by the number of beats in the score.
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WBMP is appealing, if only because it moves a bunch of music to a tempo where I might actually be able to play it cleanly.
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Thanks a lot for highlighting this very interesting article on PLOS! (And thanks to @jerwin for providing the direct link!)
My understanding from reading the article is that the pieces are played slower not by a factor / percentage, but by a certain fixed offset - the size of which depends on which group the conductor belongs to, the paper hypothesizing the three groups “Historically Informed”, “Historically Informed influence”, and “Romantic”.
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The facts are more interesting. He didn’t invent the mechanical Turk - he bought it and restored it. See Johann Nepomuk Maelzel - Wikipedia
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I don’t think this is a logical fallacy, or a truism like “I don’t like my coffee too hot”. Beethoven may have wished all his works to be played much faster than we expect. I have even heard it argued that when he went deaf he may have imagined music as being faster in his head. I am not convinced by that.
Beethoven used to conduct his own symphonies until he got too deaf to control an orchestra. People went to his concerts, and later went on to conduct the symphonies themselves. But there is no surviving report that his music was particularly fast.
We do not have a recording of Beethoven, but there are surviving mechanical reproductions (no Metronome mark, alas) of his 'Wellington’s Victory" Op 91 which was written for Maelzel’s Panharminicon… Panharmonicon - Wikipedia
We also have songs and marching tunes and arrangements of traditional tunes, which sound very odd if you go too far from the standard tempo. His use of terms such as ‘allegro’, ‘presto’, ‘moderato’ and ‘lento’ seem standard for his day: only this late metronome markings are about twice what we expect.
This may seem like modifying the data to fit the theory, rather than making a new theory to fit the data. However, I think this is the easiest explanation: it would be far odder if everything Beethoven wrote used standard notation but was supposed to be double the speed, and no-one ever commented.
We have a good and precise idea how spoken Latin sounded, and how the pronunciation varied with time from poetry, misspellings, and other data. We have no recordings of Ancient Rome but most people agree. If we can do that for a spoken language 2000 years ago, I think we can extrapolate back to Late Beethoven with confidence.
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That’s the sort of “just-so” story that people should be very skeptical of. There are a lot of unstated assumptions in that line of reasoning, and probably some racism.
Like, who says black girls only learn to sing through amplifiers? Where’s the data on Peavey speakers being the most common in black churches? Why are they not common in white singing spaces? Is it true that most black women learn to sing in church? Is it true that all models of Peavey speakers use ribbon tweeters? If not, are the models that do the ones commonly used in black churches? I’m just scratching the surface here. Stories like this sound compelling until you pick apart the details and see what a house of cards they are. All those assumptions need to be true for the reasoning to hold.
Not trying to shoot the messenger here, but stories like that are a great teaching moment for skeptical thinking.
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Well I hope my skepticism was sufficiently clear in my telling of it.
His explanation wasn’t that all Black girls only learn to sing in church choirs, but that those church choirs serve as a sort of ‘farm league’ that puts out a LOT of talented singers.
As to the prevalence of that class of Peavey speakers in those churches, based on my knowledge of other parts of the sound reinforcement industry, it is entirely believable. Peavey really excels at the sales channel thing, relative to most of their peers. But as for myself, I haven’t even visited all that many white churches.
The girls wouldn’t necessarily be singing through the PA, but all the backing music (apart from the drums, at least in smaller churches) would come through the PA. In fact, the slightly incorrect high notes that would mistrain them in this hypothesis would be coming mostly from the wedge monitors at the foot of the stage, which don’t vary nearly as much as the mains because venue size is mostly irrelevant there.
The dude what told me that stuff taught music at a high school in Goldsboro, NC (I think he was the band director, but I’m not sure anymore) who moonlighted doing live sound on the weekends, and AV installation during the summers, which is where I encountered him. So he was well placed to know these various things.
And thanks for the sensitivity, but I feel almost entirely unshot.
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Oh definitely- I just can’t seem to pass up an opportunity to soapbox about such stories, for the (hopefully) benefit of the wider audience.
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And I’m kinda hoping that someone more knowledgeable will see this and have something to add that confirms, debunks, or further explains.
Because for one thing, while I kinda get how a ribbon tweeter works, I can’t imagine why it would lose tonal accuracy as it ages. I’m also unable to recall ever seeing ribbon tweeters in a wedge monitor, but I have very little experience with Peavey gear and worked mostly with in-ear monitors after the turn of the century.
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Recorded music is itself limited by the recording medium. For instance, a 78 rpm 12 inch record plays 3.5 minutes per side. Some liberties must be taken.
Nevertheles, if it were possible to learn the length of a properly paced “Wellington’s Victory” from this early machine., and if Beethoven had used a traditional tempo marking, it may be possible to figure out how many beats were in Beethoven’s idea of presto, or largo etc.
Hah! I found a recording. This won’t tell us much because it predates the metronome. But it has marching rhythms and uses “God Save the King” (surely the dullest national anthem, ever) so we can probably guess what speed it goes at…
https://unheardbeethoven.org/mp3s/hess108.mp
For more details on the Panharmonicon, see…
https://unheardbeethoven.org/search.php?Identifier=hess108
It is not known whether the Panharmonicon had a speed regulator. Sometimes, these gadgets were cranked by hand, and you could make it go faster and slower: in which case, we are no wiser. But it is fun to speculate.
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God that sounds painfully slow. Pointlessly slow.
To me this sounds terrible and the writing just on that video makes the guy sound like a nut. Not a nut, but someone just grasping for his own ideas. He does go on randomly about why it shouldn’t be called “Moonlight” sonata.
100% not convinced by any evidence there.
Also the 5th sounds wretched. It sounds just stupid.
This reminds me of the endless Robert Johnson debate.
Except in that case, slowing down his music—a smidge—does make some of his songs sound better. Some people want to slow them down to ridiculous degrees and they start to sound like these slow Beethoven numbers.
Though the Robert Johnson theory isn’t supported by contemporaries who actually heard him, nor by audio evidence of background frequencies, his music does sound at least as good taken down a few steps.
To each it’s own, I guess. I personally think these “historical tempo” / “slowed down” versions leave much more space to appreciate some parts that usually are too fast to be enjoyed in “modern” versions.
My common argument to my friends when I show them these versions is comparing the first and second recording of Gould’s Goldberg variations. Some people like the first, which is faster and more virtuoso. I prefer the second which is a bit more solemn and meditative. I don’t think neither versions or opinions are bad 
Lang Lang’s is 1 hr 32 minutes…
If yoiu think that’s sacrilegious, wait until you hear the transcription for strings (60 minutes).
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I haven’t heard about Lang Lang’s performance, sounds good!
But I still prefer Gould’s
