Just as I had more or less completed my revision of the Hammerklavier, an unexpected new task appeared.
It began with a comment from my teacher.
“Since you have come this far, I would like to hear the piece once at Beethoven’s own metronome markings. Perhaps that was the tempo he had in his head. With DTM, it may be possible to realize things that would be extremely difficult on a real piano.”
The tempo of the Hammerklavier has long been the subject of much discussion.
This is especially true of the first movement. Beethoven’s indicated tempo there is half note = 138. This is extremely fast, and even for professional pianists it does not seem easy to master. There are indeed performers who have challenged this tempo for many years,[1] but in many performances, I think the tempo is taken considerably slower than this.
My own MIDI performance had also been around half note = 100 until now. In other words, Beethoven’s indicated tempo is nearly 40 percent faster than mine.
[1]: Pollini's Performance, for example.
When working on this revision, I had also set the tempo quite carefully. I wanted the music to sound natural to my own ears, each voice to be clearly heard, and the contrapuntal motion not to collapse in the MIDI realization.
However, when I actually brought the first movement closer to Beethoven’s indicated tempo, the impression changed dramatically.
This was not simply a matter of “fast” or “slow.”
By changing the tempo, the very image of the Hammerklavier itself began to sound different.
At that moment, I felt I understood a little more clearly what my teacher had meant.
This time, I took advantage of what MIDI makes possible. I kept the musical content and phrasing of my revised version basically unchanged, and changed only the tempo for comparison.
In other words, the balance between voices, articulation, dynamics, and pedaling were left as they were.
Only the tempo was changed.
In this way, it becomes possible to compare the effect of tempo itself on the music in a fairly pure form.
How I Set the Tempo
For this experiment, I used Tempo Process, which appears in the Tempo Track of Cubase.
This function allows the tempo map of a selected passage to be proportionally expanded or compressed by specifying a new length for that passage.
For example, if a certain section currently takes 60 seconds, and Beethoven’s indicated tempo would make it 52.5 seconds, I enter 52.5 seconds as the new length in Tempo Process. Cubase then adjusts the whole section so that it fits into that length, while preserving the internal tempo changes of the passage.
This may be one of the unique methods of verification made possible by producing classical music with MIDI.
Of course, I did not simply make an entire movement faster in one operation.
For this experiment, I followed several basic principles: using the cruising tempo as the reference, processing each section separately, excluding fermatas and resonant tails from metronome calculation, and treating passages without metronome markings as areas of performer discretion rather than forcing them into numerical values.
In other words, I separated numerical verification from musical naturalness in actual performance.
Through this process, I was reminded once again that the Hammerklavier is a work of extraordinary density and velocity.
When the music approaches Beethoven’s indicated tempo, it does not merely become faster.
The direction of the inner energy changes completely.
The structure is pushed forward, and the contrapuntal lines begin to move with greater sharpness.
Of course, I do not think that simply following Beethoven’s metronome markings automatically produces the “correct” performance. In actual performance, the instrument, the acoustics, the physicality of playing, and the musical persuasiveness of the result all matter.
Still, through this experiment, I came to feel that Beethoven’s metronome markings are not merely numbers. They may indicate the inner motion and tension contained within this work. The first movement, in particular, was overwhelming.
And interestingly, after listening to the piece once at this tempo, I returned to my original tempo and listened again. The difference then became even clearer.
After all, perhaps this really was the tempo at which the music sounded in the master’s head.
Below is the version I created using Beethoven’s indicated tempo. I think it will give a very different impression from an ordinary performance, but I hope you will listen to it as another possible face of the Hammerklavier.
Song Title:
Title:.
Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-flat Major, Op. 106, “Hammerklavier”
Beethoven’s Metronome Tempo
Sound source:
Sound Library:
Synchron Concert D-274
Audio file format: mp3
For streaming on a PC, please see this page.
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