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Welcome to AuthenticSound, an innovative and open platform of musical experimentation. Particular focus is made on tempo research, as we believe this is the most important and major missing link in reconstructing the composer's original intention. Maelzel’s 1815 metronome opened for generations to come the possibility to finally mark the intended tempi with the greatest precision. The metronome markings will be sent to you very soon. Do wait for them, Beethoven wrote at the very end of his life to his publisher Schott. In our century, such indications are certainly necessary.
Though dozens, if not hundreds of his contemporaries embraced the metronome, historical metronome marks are largely ignored today, for the simple reason they seem to make no sense. Continuous rates of 15 till 25 notes a second are no exception in both fast and slow movements and for over a century now, the world searched in vain for an answer to what seems to be an unsolvable musical mystery. According to the philosophy of Thomas Kuhn, it shouldn’t be surprising that both scholars and musicians keep looking in the same direction over and over again. As puzzle-solvers (Kuhn), they came up with theories ranging from broken metronomes over lighter instruments being easier to play till adhering even a god-like status to the 19th century musician.
The solution lies in the centuries before, where it was customary to measure time with a two-fold movement : the up and down of the foot or the arm, arsis/thesis, the Tactus, the Schlag, beat, battement,… transferred since Mersenne in the back and forth of an adjustable pendulum or metronome. The left and right movement forms the unity of the (whole) swing as it still applies to physics today. Some, as for instance Talsma in 1980 tried to establish a working theory around this concept already, but failed in either seeing the entire historical evolution or created exceptions where there weren’t. A comprehensive and new historical evolution of this practice, called the WBMP - the Whole Beat Metronome Practice is to be described in the upcoming book “Fixing the Beethoven Mistake” as it is being demonstrated in multiple recordings. The WBMP indeed is a practice, contrary to the modern (Single Beat) reading who, by lack of general application still is (and probably will be forever) in the stage of theory. Yes, the WBMP results in tempi slower (not half!) than the modern ones, but it allows us to exactly match the metronome mark left by the composer. And by that, a whole new world opens, a musical paradise that we are delighted to show to you.
