Marten Noorduin

A central aspect of Beethoven’s late works, both in the scholarly literature and in recorded musical practice of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, is the extreme slowness of the adagio sections. This has become such an ingrained part of musical culture that even the rise of the historically informed performance movement since the 1980s, which profoundly affected the tempos of slow music in a wide variety of repertoire, had little effect on the slow movements of Beethoven’s late style. Scholarship has generally attributed the slowness in the late works to the composer, but this chapter argues that the evidence for this is circumstantial and selectively chosen. It furthermore shows that these extremely slow speeds are instead the product of the reception history of this repertoire, and explores the erroneous transmission of the historical evidence involved, as well as the changing role of the concept of deafness in relation to this repertoire. Finally, it concludes that notwithstanding the oft-repeated claims of revisionism by scholars and musicians, the nineteenth-century ‘cult of the classical adagio’ continues, albeit tacitly, to shape our conception of Beethoven’s late style.

In recent years, Beethoven’s metronome marks for his Ninth Symphony have experienced a renewed relevance, with several ensembles incorporating the indicated speeds in their performances. Nevertheless, previous research has shown that some of the marks have been incorrectly transmitted, and there is the suspicion that further mistakes are still undiscovered. Focusing particularly on the second and fourth movements, this article discusses the historical sources and scholarly contexts for these markings, within a historical framework that draws on Beethoven’s general tempo principles, as well as observations from contemporaries. The article suggests that the trio of the second movement has three speeds that can be justified historically, although the most popular option, minim = 160, arguably has the least supporting evidence. The discussion also draws attention to another metronome mark for the final section of the symphony that has been often overlooked. Finally, it argues that one of the most often cited examples of an erroneously transmitted metronome mark, the dotted minim = 96 for the Schreckensfanfare found in the later sources, is consistent with Beethoven’s wider practice, and should provide an incentive for performers to experiment with historically informed tempi in this familiar repertory.

Sir Charles Hallé was possibly the first pianist with a truly intercontinental career—his concert tours took him from many European counties to as far away as Australia—and his activities have been documented in detail by Ann Kersting and more recently Robert Beale. One of the cornerstones of Hallé’s identity as a musician was Beethoven’s music, the familiarity of which was still developing during his career. This chapter shows how the critical reception of Hallé’s performances in France, the United Kingdom, and Germany was influenced by degree to which Beethoven’s music was known by his audience and critics. The final part of this chapter will demonstrate how Hallé’s reception by European critics influenced the reception of his performances in Australia in the 1890s.

Shortly after Beethoven’s death, several of his closest associates provided performance indications for editions of his works. Previous discussions of Carl Czerny’s and Ignaz Moscheles’s metronome marks for Beethoven’s piano sonatas have highlighted the importance of these indications for our understanding of the intended performance practice of these works. Nevertheless, the provenance and meaning of these metronome marks have remained unclear, which has led to some confusion in the literature.

By presenting new evidence, including the discovery of what are most likely the metronome marks intended for the missing sonatas from the first ‘complete’ edition by Tobias Haslinger, the article presents a more complete overview of the indications in these editions, as well as their chronology. In addition, it also discusses to what degree the editors seem to have influenced each other, which indications are most likely representative of Beethoven’s intended speeds, as well as why the metronome fell out of favour later in the nineteenth century. Finally, it discusses the meaning of these metronome marks for modern performers, and how these editions give options to disentangle the author from the text.

Beethoven’s tempo indications have been the subject of much scholarly debate, but a coherent understanding of his intended tempos has not yet emerged. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, some of the discussion has been based on unreliable sources, or an unrepresentative sample of sources. Secondly, the substantial differences between tempo preferences in the early nineteenth century and now has made these tempo indications difficult to approach for musicians in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Thirdly, discussions of Beethoven’s tempo have typically focussed on works in one particular genre. This thesis overcomes these limitations by incorporating all of Beethoven’s works, and rooting the whole research in a wide variety of sources from the eighteenth and nineteenth century that have a plausible relationship with Beethoven’s practice. In particular the metronome marks by Beethoven, as well as those from his close contemporaries Carl Czerny, Ignaz Moscheles, and Karl Holz, provide great insight into the composer’s sense of tempo. By using as many sources on Beethoven’s tempo as possible, this approach makes reasonable estimations of the actual speeds that Beethoven had in mind for his works. Furthermore, it also allows an exploration of the musical intuitions that are the root cause of these speeds.

We are delighted to announce a new call for applications for Short Term Scientific Missions (STSMs) in the framework of the COST Action A new ecosystem of early music studies (EarlyMuse (https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA21161/; https://earlymuse.eu/).
With the 2024 STSM program, EarlyMuse promotes collective missions that connect at least two researchers from different countries with a host in a third country. We are delighted to announce that applications are now open for 36 places in ten projects, hosted by institutions across Europe. For full details of the projects, see the Appendix. We are most grateful to the hosts for constructing such promising missions.

This data set was created during 2012-2016 as a tool for my doctorate research on Beethoven’s tempo indications at the University of Manchester. It provides an unprecedented overview of Beethoven’s entire published oeuvre, both with opus numbers and without, by documenting the time signature, tempo indication, indicators of expression, and metronome marks for each individual section of each piece. This data set has been used for my doctoral project and its spin-off publications.

Last year Mark Evan Bonds described in these pages ‘the robust health of Beethoven research today’ (Eighteenth-Century Music 17/2 (2020), 302), and while the global health crisis affecting many scholarly and artistic events connected with Beethoven makes that description now seem inappropriate, there can hardly have been a better illustration of his assessment than the conference under discussion here. It once again showed that few other musicological topics can count on such a diversity of perspectives and methodologies, presented by scholars with a wide range of backgrounds and nationalities.

Organized by the Hochschule der Künste Bern and the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, and with the patronage of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, this originally three-day event was planned to be covered by Radio della Svizzera Italiana, and to feature two concerts on historical instruments. Owing to the pandemic, the entire programme took place online, and in order to minimize the number of scholars in other time zones having to participate at unreasonable hours, the sessions were shortened to three and a half hours every day, which in turn necessitated the inclusion of a fourth day in order to accommodate all the papers.

PERSPECTIVES ON HISTORICALLY INFORMED PRACTICES IN MUSIC
10-12 September 2018
Faculty of Music, University of Oxford

Transforming Nineteenth Century Historically Informed Practice (TCHIP) will host an international conference on Perspectives on Historically Informed Practices in Music at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford from Monday 10th September to Wednesday 12th September.

Historical Performance scholarship is enjoying something of a revitalization; new methods, research into music of the 20th Century, greater integration with performers and the music industry, and interdisciplinary approaches are just some of the influences currently broadening the field. Perspectives on Historically Informed Practices in Music aims to bring together scholars and performer/scholars researching performance in the long 19th, and the 20th-centuries and will explore current research foci and possible future developments in historical performance research.

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline: noon on 12th January 2018

The Programme Committee welcomes proposals for individual papers, lecture recitals, and sessions using alternative formats in any areas of scholarship related to methodological developments in Historical Performance scholarship (on any period), as well as the performance practices of the 19th Century more specifically. Individual papers will be 30 mins with 15 mins for questions/discussion; lecture recitals will be 1 hour; and panel discussions will be 90 mins.

The following non-exhaustive list indicates some of the intended themes of the conference:

Developments in HIP (Historically Informed Performance) scholarship including new and interdisciplinary methods
Pre-performance - the processes that precede the public act of performance either in the 19th Century or today
19th-century expression in chamber and orchestral instrumental performance
Performance practices of the 20th Century
HIP Communities of Practice and the accounts of HIP professionals
HIP audiences
The evolution and future of specialist HIP provision in Higher Education and its interface with professional practices.
Annotated printed editions and hand annotated performance materials
Technological developments in HIP research
Lost histories and under-researched groups of performers
The interaction of research and professional practice in modern HIP
Proposals of no more than 300 words should be sent as a Word attachment (including details of author(s), affiliations (University, Conservatoire/College, Orchestra, Chamber Ensemble etc), contact details etc) to c19hip@music.ox.ac.uk, to arrive before the deadline of noon on 12th January 2018. Proposals will be reviewed anonymously, so please submit a second version of your proposal with all names and institutional affiliations removed.

The Conference Committee, consisting of Claire Holden, Eric Clarke, Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey, and Marten Noorduin will respond to authors by January 31st 2018. 

We welcome proposals from professional HIP performers without an institutional affiliation. A limited number of bursaries will be available for performers/scholars without institutional affiliation; and for students (please see website from February for more details).

The life of the distinguished pianist and conductor Charles Hallé has been the subject of several books based in large part upon an examination of his papers and the English press. This has led to an assessment of Hallé’s achievements largely focused on his activities in England, most notably on his Beethoven piano recitals and on his accomplishments as founder and conductor of the celebrated Hallé orchestra in Manchester. However, Hallé was also one of the first artists to tour internationally as pianist and conductor, travelling, for example, to Germany, Austria, France, South Africa, and Australia. Hallé’s activities in these areas have remained largely unexplored. Based on a search of the RIPM databases of international periodicals, this paper examines Hallé’s reception as pianist and conductor on his tours outside of the UK.