How Fast is Fast?

a musician's radar gun

Markand Thakar

In a Cadillac Eldorado with the windows up, how fast is 70 miles per hour? Pretty darned slow. On a Vespa? Pretty darned fast. Exactly how fast? Unfortunately, your friendly local state trooper knows to a fair degree of precision. (Trust me on this.)

We musicians don’t have the equivalent of a radar gun. Well, we do sort of…

Let’s go back 200 years to Vienna, where Ludwig van Beethoven was befriended by a man by the name of Johann Nepomuk Mälzel (not to be confused with Johann Nepomuk Hummel, whose trumpet concerto has put many gray hairs on trumpet teachers across the centuries). Mälzel was a crackpot. He invented a “chess-playing machine” (operated by a hidden chess-playing human) with which he toured Europe and the US. (The fraud was detected by none other than Edgar Allan Poe — as Casey Stengel used to say, you could look it up.) He invented a panharmonicon, an automated instrument that played all the instruments of a military band, and convinced Beethoven to compose a piece for it. (Of course the ensuing lawsuit over the rights soured the relationship a bit…you could look that up, too.)

But Mälzel’s lasting contribution was putting his name to the metronome, a device that could keep a steady beat at variable and determinate speeds. With this fantastic machine a composer could communicate exactly how fast he wanted his piece played. In 1817, the completely deaf Beethoven excitedly set about notating precise metronomic speeds for his earlier compositions: 66 beats per minute for this movement, 104 for that one, and so on. And what a great boon this has been, because performers could now know not only what pitches and rhythms and dynamics the work requires, but the precise tempos as well!

Or perhaps not. Remember that loud, wind-blown, bumpy, Vespa careening along at 70 mph? That quiet, serene Eldorado ride at the same speed? The same dichotomy between physical speed and quality of motion exists in music. Our perception of the quality of motion is affected by numerous conditions. For example, a loud passage at 60 beats to the minute with multitudes of quick notes will be perceived as considerably faster than a soft passage with many fewer notes at the same physical speed.

And this is where we encounter Mälzel’s enduring unfortunate legacy for music lovers: the stark difference between music and the everyday world. In the everyday world, physical speed is the reality (“I’m sorry sir, I don’t care what it felt like, I clocked you at 70. License and registration.”). But in experiencing music all we have is our perception, so if it seems faster, it IS faster.

The finest performances leave the musical radar gun —Herr Mälzel’s metronome — back in the practice room. To quote Johannes Brahms, “the metronome isn’t worth much, for I myself have never believed that my blood and a mechanical instrument go well together.”

Did you enjoy reading this article? Time flies when you’re having fun.

Markand Thakar is the Charles A. & Carolyn M. Russell Music Director, Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra; music director, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra; principal conductor, Duluth Festival Opera; and the co-director of the graduate conducting program, Peabody Conservatory.