Bernstein's SECRET to INSTANT SUCCESS on Stage: Best Music Lesson Ever!
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- Äas pĆidĂĄn 14. 05. 2024
- Without a doubt, Leonard Bernstein is one of the most inspiring and most outspoken musicians of the past hundred years. In this video we zoom in on a lesser-known interview in which he explains his extremely slow tempo for Wagner's Tristan. The lyrical description of his experience brings us to the doorstep of Whole Beat. Are you struggling as a musician to find a new, perhaps unique place in today's overcrowded music landscape? Then this video is for you :-)
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This is exactly what I've been telling people about Shakespeare. What happens is directors think the performance is lagging, so, being afraid of bored audiences, they tell the actors to pick up the pace, thus making an already challenging work incomprehensible, So the audience gets bored, because they don't understand. The first priority in Shakespeare is to make it clear and understandable. When the audience can follow they will understand, when they understand they will be moved. Then, after sitting through and even longer performance, they will say it just flew by.
So true, Majoofi. It's exactly the same phenomenon, and I am convinced it is for the same reason. My wife and I have watched the BBC Shakespeare performances from the 1980s multiple times. Most are excellent, but some are marred by this speedup phenomena. Some actors are always comprehensible, some almost never so. My wife and I discovered that if we put on the subtitles in these annoying places, it can help. Yet, we are born and very literate English speakers. Why should this be necessary? It is so tragic--and not in the way Shakespeare intended. As Wim's ideas catch on, it will also be a boon to comprehensible dramatic performance, and the whole artistic world will become a happier place.
Bernstein's ego was mammoth, but so was his gift for understanding music and bringing it to life. I once heard him conduct Elgar's Enigma Variations and the tempo of the famous "Nimrod" variation was the broadest I've ever heard, indeed the broadest imaginable.
If one actually takes the trouble to look at a score of the Tristan prelude one discovers that Bernstein, despite his (to me) too slow tempo, is actually performing it as written. The pauses at the start are precisely notated (i.e. given notated values, no vague fermatas here) to get progressively shorter -- an extraordinary accelerando of musical tension by means of silences. Probably less than half of the recordings available through streaming services follow Wagner's quite clear notation as accurately as Bernstein. "Lenny," who I had the privilege of meeting several times in college and later (I'm actually in the Norton Lecture video audience) is often more score-accurate than he is given credit for. Another example, like the Tristan, is the high tension he gets out of the slow opening of the second half of Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps, which is hardly ever accurately taken at the various indicated metronome markings (I refer to the NY Phil recording here). The tension is only broken by that infamous 11-beat pounding leading up to the Naming of the Chosen One. Bernstein was an eternally questing musician always considering musical options. I know for a fact that at his death plans had been afoot for him to record with an original-instrument orchestra. I wonder what he would have thought of this YT channel.
Hard to think this is the same man who complained to the audience that he thought Glenn Gould's Brahms D minor concerto performance was too slow!
yes! czcams.com/video/nsIJduLlMf4/video.html
It's a prevalent prejudice in so much of today's classical music industry:. Faster is better...flashy pyrotechnics and athletic performances will draw the crowds⊠Absolutely the opposite is true. Serve the music first, and your audience will be drawn to you. Allow moments to sing.
That is why I love Celibidaches Bruckner!
wow, this is impressive
Time for change
Hear, Hear!
There's no way that Beethoven would have wanted his music that slow. He was a virtuoso himself, with a hot temper, and people had the same pulse and feelings that we have today.
Just think of Paganini, a contemporary of B. who inspired Liszt to his virtuoso piano playing. Or HĂ€ndel, a great inspiration for B. His operas, oratorios or concertos were certainly not meant to drag in tempo, but to be swift and jolly for the most. There is an unbroken tradition of performing The Messiah from its premiere, and there is no indication that they played very much slower in the 1700:s than today. It must have a natural flow!
There are recordings of Parsifal with people who premiered it, and that sounds pretty much the same as we do it today.
So, you are on the wrong track, I'm afraid.
Also, listen to Bernstein's Beethoven cycles!
That he occationally played things very slow, is no evidence for how it was back in the 1800:s. He took Elgar's Nimrod much slower than Elgar himself conducted it!
I think there is an introductory video to this channel. Things are more complicated than what they seem, and none of us in this community ever chose to go against the mainstrean, it's more the other way around...
On the contrary, there is no other solution to the metronome problem than this one. That is not even a debate any longer. Also, today we set virtuosity equal to the number of notes per second someone can play. What so many people do (you as well) is to pretend people 250 years ago had exactly the same assumptions as we have. That however, oftentimes is not the case.
I've been recommended a number of your videos and am very curious, how does one apply the whole beat method to 3/4, 5/4, 7/8 and other time signatures? I don't think I've seen this addressed in a video yet, but I haven't watched all your content yet., so I'm very curious!
Great job, Wim!
This is awesome
Pretty amazing stuff, very good!
How amazing to have that direct connection with your audience, how you care for the people listening carefully to you (and the composer) in the hall⊠How the artist communicates emotions,
When it comes to Beethoven's 9th symphony, what to make of the accounts of people saying how much the duration of the program was? At the speed that the movement is played in this video it could be almost twice as long, yet people didn't say in the time of Beethoven that the symphony is 2 hours long. (maybe the whole entire program, not the symphony alone)
We don't know what versions of those works was performed, or even if the performers felt any obligatuon to go throught them entirely, or if they would cut parts out, or what was or wasn't repeated. We don't know a lot because it wasn't audio captured, so we can't assume anything, we just don't know.
@@dorette-hi4j You can choose to assume whatever you want, and so can we all. But that is not knowing. We don't assume that single-beat readings are impossible in thousands of instances, we know. We're playing different games here.
@@dorette-hi4j Why? Feel free to not reply again, once the effort is more work than pleasure for you :)
@@dorette-hi4j I checked. But there's no point saying that to you, is it. And there's no point debating what makes a performance speed impossible, or even worse, unacceptable! You're here in bad faith. This too I know. But it's your work to convince me, isn't it?
â@@dorette-hi4j In 1825, Smart conferred personally with Beethoven regarding the tempi, metronome markings and timings for a number of his works, including the 9th. As Beethoven played various selections on pianoforte, Smart noted the timings. The performance times were very similar to those heard today, some even faster. The idea that they were played slowly has no basis in verifiable fact and is clearly contradicted by a number of sources from that time period, including Smart and others.
I just came across this channel. Never heard this before, but makes some sense. In particular, regarding Beethoven, I really like Arrauâs performance of the Walstein sonata, which is a slower than what one usually hears. Most performances feel rushed to me, and the way he plays it you can hear whatâs going on and every note is so clean and clear.
I am so thankfully happy that you also included the example with Mahler and crista ludwig, that is also something very worth and important to mention, but i have to say bernstein is very lagging with playing classical music his theories are always interesting to listen about what he came up with the composers thinking or interpretation he is explaining so in detail but then playing it ... i think i got some ear damage from that.
I completely agree about singing being way more comfortable at slower tempos! I do quite a lot of hymn singing as I play weekly at a mission and the men in the chapel service really donât sing despite our projecting the lyrics, so in order to play decently and sing I had to adopt slower tempos, and guess whatâŠthe hymns come alive and really minister , first of all to me as I work on them through the week, but more importantly to the the people thank me each week for the music. This video was excellent. I canât wait for the book! đđđŒâ€âđș
Can you show me a single source where is being said that 1 tick is being counted as 1 beat? You're telling me that we all decided to count 1 tick as 1 beat, but no one wrote or said anything about it? No one wrote a letter saying anything about it? No one covered it in a document? Such a wild shift in metronome counting would definitely be documented somewhere.
czcams.com/video/lqSBIKpvyt4/video.html
Where in this video is there a source that includes someone noticing the super obvious shift in metronome counting? The whole video is just about a canon from (probably) Beethoven. Whether it's true that the one canon exactly represents the ticks of the metronome or only imitates it, is not very relevant to the entirety of classical music and all composers and musicians. I want to see a source where a person writes something about a shift in metronome counting, because such a big change is not to be ignored. If there isn't any source supporting this claim, it is extremely unlikely and I'm willing to say impossible that there actually occurred such a metronome counting shift. Such a thing can't be unseen. At most you could find a few sources that say tempi sped up, but certainly not saying anything close to ''twice as slow'' or anything about a different interpretation of using the metronome.
Fascinating, and Bernsteinâs articulation of the idea is funny, compelling, inspiring (like Lenny himself with all his leonine charisma). And the point persuades. But surely, the answer lies neither in slowing down nor in speeding up, but rather in varying the pace to suit the material⊠with an eye to the judicious use of surprise to keep the audience engaged.
The long silences - same thing in the opening Largo of the Beethoven Pathetique sonata - does anyone ever actually count them out! It is VERY difficult, and leaves me terrified of losing my listeners (what few I have). The desire to jump ahead is powerful, those silences are disturbing, which is what Beethoven surely intended. Opening bars of Chopin's b-minor Scherzo, as well, and taking his Nocturnes at a tempo suitable for midnight, on the edge of fear, sleep, instability and insanity, and not the afternoon rush hour.
Do I see it right: the Mahler-Bernstein is much younger than the Wagner-Bernstein. Could that explain the different approach?
Could be. Gould also slowed down for his second Goldberg recording.
Yes. Young Bernstein was much faster than older Bernstein.
As a non-parisian french friend of mine once told me, learn to enjoy "la lenteur"... they know how to have fun in "La Douce France".
he was hyping up that pause so much and it barely felt like a few seconds lol
a few seconds of silence in radio is an eternity
So what do you think of Cellibidache's tempos , mainly in Bruckner and in general?
When musicians have the courage to think for themselves and outside the box, you often see an attempt to go slower. However, they didn't connect to a certain tradition or didn't have any wish to be "authentic" - purely by instinct they came to this logic track. See for instance also this video: czcams.com/video/QW1fRLLdEK8/video.html
What a great find, Wim! Yes, the great Bernstein. He does it, it's sublime . . . and then he doesn't, it's so disappointing. And yet how I sympathize with him when he describes how he had to walk out after the first movement of a piece by his own protege, James Levine, that was destroyed by the rushed tempo. (For him it was his great natural gift of musicianship. I first had to learn it from you.)
The clip with the mezzo is also choice, with Bernstein saying, "it doesn't matter, nobody's gonna' hear the words anyway." And then the Iron Maiden segment! My wife's parents grew up with Leonard in the Boston area. Her mother had a choice anecdote about him as a precocious teenager, that also captures her father's wry wit. (I'll have to check with my wife to get it just right for you) . . . . This was one of your best, Wim. Just truthful and fair. Giving credit where is it due, yet not leaving out the the human foibles. Keep on going.
R.I.P. Leonard Bernstein! You enlightened so many musicians and humans all over the globe!
Thank you so much for your wonderful and mind-blowing work. If you haven't already, you should look up the clip where Bernstein marvels at the tempo and the metronome mark (!) for the "Minuetto" 3rd movement of Beethoven's 1st symphony.
Why people always take things to the extreme? I don't like music too rushed, but I don't like it too slow either. It should be about finding a balance, don't you think? :)
our research concerns simply to understand how the metronome was used in those days and apply the outcome. Everyone applies those facts (or not) as they want of course
Thereâs a video of Mikhail Pletnev playing Chopin C# minor valse quite slower than what is heard normally. Not sure if itâs consider whole beat but I think it sounds much better than others who play the Piu Mosso section super fast. Btw is pretty awesome to see Iron Maiden and Bernstein in same video.
Does that mean we could used notes an octave lower? It's a serious question, since it relates to the same physics way to count a frequency half of its cycle.
that's why in the 19th c piano pitch often was described as 880 hz. no joke.
Don't take that thumbnail literally, folks!
better not :-)
What Bernstein describes already happenend in the 19th century. At least thats what most music ciritics of those times already saw coming.
I grew up on some of Bernsteinâs TV programs. Glenn Gould premiered on US TV in a program which begins with the Eroica Symphonyâs dilemma, the MM 1/2 not = 60 and Bernstein relates that at circa 11 1/2 minutes or 691 seconds none of the faster conductors play under 13 minutes, Toscanini Walter 14, etc⊠Well worth the watch⊠czcams.com/video/zuxPKikM0NI/video.html So Lenny unknowingly earlier in his career gives examples against single beat interpretation of Beethovenâs mark. His Orchestra had the ability to play fast yet was prologue about interpretation, artistic influence of the conductors which he cites conductors âAâ and âZâ of the music being heroic or a German conductor who believes that Beethoven should sing.
Thank you for this Video of which I was unaware, especially the quote that Tristan prelude played slowly was for the aged and Iâll conductorâs comment he had finally âheardâ the Tristan.
Iâve seen videos on CZcams in which the C Major Prelude from WTC pt 1 was by the professor instruction to be played Prestissimo, another video has the Prelude to The Bach G major solo Cello Sonata played, to borrow a term from physics, damn fast, approaching (hyperbole) twice YoYo Maâs brisk performance. Both are wrong, the prelude has no Tempo term by default, is in Tempo Ordinario, so heartbeat rate for C (Praetorius 1600, Kirnberger, J S Bachâs student have this as 1/4, Quantz would use 80 bpmâŠ1 1/3 that speed. Also as the note values are all 1/16th notes would be slowerâŠif not as Slow as an Allemande, which with the Sarabande is among the slower or slowest dances in the Baroque Suite tempi.
Speed Metal (on amphetamines) has an equivalent, Bach on Speed, but Speed Kills, not the 2008 movie, but rather the mid 20th Century public service announcements against excessive fastness in teen age drivers in cars. Maybe Beethoven and Wagner do not have to race to beat the train to the railroad crossingâŠ
Given that there's been a continuous tradition of performing Beethoven's symphonies starting from Beethoven's times, I wonder at what stage, all of a sudden, people decided to play them twice as fast for no reason...
nobody every decided to speed up twice "suddenly", firstly that would not work since it is not possible in many instances, secondly that would be the weirdest decision ever. What happened is a normal evolution in which music was sped up constantly and there was no desire at all to keep the old traditions alive. 200 years of the evolution we believe they must have played even faster as we do because the MMs in single beat seem to suggest that. But the reverse is true - we are still on this slowly evolving path of speeding up and have issues going back to what it most certainly has been 2 centuries ago.
â@@AuthenticSound This is wrong. Alot of early musicians played in the same tempo we do today. Chopin's and Liszt's pupils who lived to have access to recording, they all recorded and played on the same tempo "singlebeat" pianists play, and in Alan Walker's book "Reflections on Liszt" he states that the second movement of Hammerklavier lasts 20 minutes in Quaver=80 tempo which is very accurate in terms of durations of modern performances like Elly Ney and Sokolov (Elly Ney was a pupil of Emil Von Sauer who was a pupil of Liszt). What we should wonder about is why some people think they're right by going against the students of those composers and all the sources we have about tempo and Maelzel's instructions themselves, and play at half the speed people have always been playing at. Its not a "There was no desire to to play in old traditions", its you making up false information about tempo and ignoring what the person who enhanced the metronome himself instructed and the recordings of pupils of the composers you claim played in "wholebeat"
Bernstein actually said no one could hear the words (not understand the words as you stated)
So is this like the slow food movement, translated to the slow music movement? ;)
But I like the idea of slowing down, luxuriating in beautiful sounds a little longer. Iâm going to try it myself on the piano shortly.
Actually it is not - our research concerns simply to understand how the metronome was used in those days and apply the outcome. It does result in slower performances and it may very well connect to a similar feeling of 'relaxation' of other movements, but the underlying aim comes from a different perspective. The research brings us there, not any preformulated outcome. Enjoy your time at the piano and take your time, it is a new language!
Listening to classical music radio stations I have noticed that they favour recent recordings, possibly because of the modern tendency to play at breakneck speed (possibly because it allows more time for advertising). It takes so much away from the music to go so fast. I don't understand it.
Indeed very interesting chat. I wonder, it's known that the tempi in the past generations were faster than ours. How come Lenny says it's too fast just not letting the audience get bored? Cute and valuable chat, thow.â€
the opposite is true, tempi were much slower in the past, we simply read the mms wrong!
So what if Bernstein bragged?! So would we if we were in his shoes!
Bernstein had an egoâŠa personalityâŠand although I donât always agree with his choices. I respect his reasons. His performance of Vivaldi Concerto for diverse instruments was my introduction, to Vivaldi-not the Four Seasons. He used violins and trumpets, (instead of Violin en Tromba marina which, he confesses he didnât know what was the instrument)âŠsubstituted a bass oboe for two chalameus which basset horns would have been closer, substituted harps for lutes, mandolins, violins, and then Bernstein lead from and played the harpsichord continuo part which was micâd so you can hear the part. It was my favorite version, until period violin Tromba Marine were recreated and the period instrument versions appeared. Yet there was a joy in his Blacklight Poster Paint on Velvet Canvass rendition by Bernstein, he made a musical statement with the forces at his disposal, and made memorable performances, the recording inspired a film maker to produce a short subject movieâŠConcerto in diverse movement with Bernsteinâs 1st movement as the soundtrack.
One has to wonder whether he wasn't sometimes tempted to speed things up a bit simply so he could go have a ciggie... :-)
At what moment the paradigm shifted from whole beat to single beat? did that came from composers in the XXth century or from academics forgetting the previous tradition?
Through the beginning of the 20th century, there was a lot of emphasis on acceleration, industrialization, and this was tied to extreme ideologies that, as you may be aware, tend to dictate how everything ought to be, in opposition to how it has been up to that point. Music was no different.
@@dorette-hi4j Everyone likes music played fast, I don't know of anyone who doesn't. Do you think Mr. Winters doesn't? Hard to be a Glen Gould fan if you don't like fast music.
@@dorette-hi4j Well, we'll just disagree. But before anything else, let me ask you, are you really trying to convince anyone of anything, or are you just wasting your time with lazy pretensions? Do you wish to convince the convinced already, or the non-convinced like me?
Strangely according to WW single beat seems to have existed since the invention of metronome along with double beat. But nobody wrote in their score which system they used-then how did people even know which is the correct tempo? Wasnât the device invented to mark the exact tempo composers wanted?
I would love to replace the word 'slow' with words like 'natural', 'centered,' and 'mindful.'
I myfelf prefer a notion of weight, gravity. However much you want the music's emotional content to sink in with the audience, or on the other hand how much you want to carry them along, that's how I feel for a right tempo.
but what if something is slow and not any of those other three adjectives?
Human
What about Otto Klemperer? Many of his recordings are very slow.
I watched this video essay titled "FIRST SOUNDS: Humanity's First Recordings of Its Own Voice." Link: czcams.com/video/75UrxueiP-4/video.html
It discusses the earliest audio recordings made by humans, featuring historical recordings and highlighting the technological breakthroughs that enabled these early sound captures. The video explores the significance of these recordings in the context of audio technology's evolution, providing listeners with an understanding of how humanity began to document and preserve its auditory expressions.
In the video, the author comes to a mind-blowing conclusion: the audio of the first recording was initially misinterpreted due to a mistake in reading the acoustic frequency cycles. This error led them to reproduce the sound at twice the speed at which it was originally recorded.
I don't know what this should mean for the whole beat theory, but it made me wonder about the knowledge we take for granted based only on intuition and pure inertia.
Dear Wim, I certainly appreciate, admire what you [along with Alberto Sanna] do in terms of slowing down the music of Schubert to whole beat/double beat; the problem with your message, is that you donât give a clear timeline-what year it was when the establishment [suddenly] decided to speed up the tempo?
You mention in this video the music of Mahler, as there is a recording from 1905 by Mahler himself, and there are plenty of recordings by Rachmaninoff performing Rachmaninoff, Shostakovitch performing Shostakovitch, and so forth... Thus, we count on you to kindly give us a clear timeline in this regard [perhaps in your next video].
Blessings,
Hillel Glueck
nobody every decided to speed up twice "suddenly", firstly that would not work since it is not possible in many instances, secondly that would be the weirdest decision ever. What happened is a normal evolution in which music was sped up constantly and there was no desire at all to keep the old traditions alive. 200 years of the evolution we believe they must have played even faster as we do because the MMs in single beat seem to suggest that. But the reverse is true - we are still on this slowly evolving path of speeding up and have issues going back to what it most certainly has been 2 centuries ago.
@@AuthenticSound Ok but how do you explain composers playing their own pieces at the same tempo people do nowadays? Also why do you have this paragraph saved and paste it whenever someone asks a question about your double-beat theory?
Ending in an enantiodromia which appositizes the phrase
If classical music becomes slower, it wonât be classical anymore, coz it will sound contemporary.
great point of view.
For a second I thought: this was a good thing. Slowing down to a more moderate tempo, that is more likely to be an authentic way of playing. My opinion is that the HIP movement is on totally wrong track in playing baroque music that fast and mechanic as they do nowadays. And minimalizing the orchestras in classical works, when they sound much better with full string sections etc.
But when I listened to the piano versions of Beethoven symphonies, it became clear that this is wrongly thought. They are ridiculously slow. The scene by the brook from the 6th is supposed to sound like a gently flowing brook, but here it was like thick mud slowly passing by... 26 minutes for that movement alone!! And scherzos, that are supposed to sound quick and witty just stamp on the spot. And the minuets would be impossible to dance to in that slow tempo. And the total timings are just ridiculous: 80' for the Eroica! 110' (almost 2 hours!) for the 9th!!!
So, they had a good idea, but have lost all musical feeling here, sorry to say.
first time is a chock, second rule you understand, third time you never want to go back. After all, it are Beethovens tempi.
Bruce Dickinson should play the saxophone.
BACH BACH BACH BACH BACH BACHBACH BACH BACH
Beethovenâs Ninth Symphonyâs appearance in the Beatlesâ movie Help saved Ringo from being eaten by a man eating Tiger n 1965. The Ode To Joy became very popular as a result at weddings afterwards among the teen agers and young adult.
If anyone is interested in taking a look, I would be very happy.
And yet Lenny, as they call him, shamed Glenn Gould by apologizing to the listeners for Gould's slow version of a Bach piano concerto in Dm.
I think you mean a Brahms piano concerto.
@howardgilman5698 yes, your right, it was Brahms, Dm concerto. At least I got that part correct.
I mostly agree with you, since you make the point with clear sources. Playing slow is for musicians (fast is for the show). Nevertheless, this time is very much about feelings. And my feelings say: dont trust a narcissist who have his brain smoked and cant even think about his thinking.
I thought the most famous melody ever is « Happy Birthday » đ
Not sure how this relates to whole beat. Wagner doesn't use a metronome marking.
â@@dorette-hi4j In which case, Warnerâs interpretation of his own early metronome markings was faster than his contemporaries, and not by a simple ratio.
@@dorette-hi4j Agreed particularly on the last point
Heil Harnoncourt
What a truckload of bullshit
Yeah, it came into my youtube recommendationsâŠ
That interviewer of Bernstein keeps interrupting!
Beethoven wrote tempo markings. Almost nobody today plays what Beethoven wrote. Itâs all way too slow. During the time of Beethoven, the technique was not advanced as it is now. Especially for cello. You take clues from the score to get the intended tempi. You will never bore an audience if you do what the composer intended.
Really bad english but well spoken
Who says we play music slower. Maybe you do. Come to Europe and listen to Ton Koopman playing Bach. Listen to Karajan recordings. I am truly lost as to what you are talking about. Listen to Agerich and Dutoit (London) doing Prokovieff 3! So sad to make sweeping claims and generalizations!!!!! Then the are other conductors who perform certain pieces slower and it brings out the virtue. To make a generalization is so silly and to select only a few Bernstein clips proves nothing. You ought to study another academic subject to learn how to compare and contrast and how to make a much tighter argument. Your argument is extremely amateur!
By âwe,â Wim Winters is referring to himself and Alberto Sanna, the two musicians featured on this channel. In other words, he is saying that he and Alberto play slower than most modern musicians.
I didn't. I quite literally say the opposite :-)
This Beethoven 9 in the background is not only wrong, itâs unmusical. Gross.
Really nice video but I must say that I hate with a passion when something in a foreign language (with respect to the rest of the medium) doesn't get translated, it's so pretentious
He said especially the prelude he liked
The pause, poise
@@reaganwiles_artI know, it's not the point, but thank you for being helpful đ
Utter nonsense.
Ahh yes Lennie and the ubiquitous cigaretteđŹ
Why do you say the name Wagner like an English speaker who has never heard the surname?
Educated English speakers speak the name just as Bernstein and his interviewer, both native English speakers, speak the name.
Please don't make English sound stupid by using the soft W.
Agreed, there is no need to make English speakers sound more stupid than they actually are.