"Correct time is considered indispensable; then why not use the Metronome. Hummel has recommended it in the strongest terms. My regard for it is such, that for twenty-five years or more I never taught a pupil without it."
A metronome is a device that produces an audible click or other sound at a uniform interval that can be set by the user, typically in beats per minute (BPM). Metronomes may also include synchronized visual motion, such as a swinging pendulum or a blinking light. Musicians—and others including dancers, athletes, and health professionals—often practise with a metronome to improve their timing, espec
"How shall a discriminating sense of rhythm and a correct regard for time-keeping be cultivated? Certainly not by the continuous use of the metronome. The click of this little mechanical time-keeper serves admirably to mark the tempo, but if slavishly depended on will make a slave of mechanism rather than a musician."
Metronome"To be emotional in musical interpretation, yet obedient to the initial tempo and true to the metronome, means about as much as being sentimental in engineering. Mechanical execution and emotion are incompatible. To play Chopins G major Nocturne with rhythmic rigidity and pious respect for the indicated rate of movement would be as intolerably monotonous, as absurdly pedantic, as to recite Grays famous Elegy to the beating of a metronome."
Metronome"The most mechanical playing imaginable can proceed from those who make themselves slaves to this little musical clock, which was never intended to stand like a ruler over every minute of the students practice time."
Metronome"If a pianist plays as if a metronome were at his side, the time may be faultless, but there will not be much scope for expression."
Metronome"100 according to Maelzel, but this must be held applicable to only the first measures, for feeling also has its tempo and this cannot entirely be expressed in this figure."
Metronome"Metrical exactitude ... is the embodiment of slavishness in music, i.e., the music is the slave of the beat when it should be its master, exactly the opposite of what C.P.E. Bach suggested, in his Essay on the "True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments," when he wrote that one should "endeavor to avoid everything mechanical and slavish. Play from the soul, not like a trained bird." Like the beating of the heart, the musical pulse needs to fluctuate in speed as the emotional content of the music fluctuates. Like the natural shifting accents in speech, musical accents need to shift according to the meaning being expressed. To feel perfect, music must be metrically imperfect."
Metronome