Metronome — Maelzel's Apparatus, after Winkel (1814)

Stopped

100

BPM · MM

Andantino

80–108

BPM

Meter

Subdivide

Ratio

Cycle (s)

seconds per LCM cycle

Beat A · rate

— bpm

Beat B · rate

— bpm

Cycle

2.00 s

every 3 beats of A = 2 beats of B

Practice

from to in s

Practice ramp Idle

80 — bpm 140

Tempo Term § B

The Italian terms are named directly from the BPM you set. Where the historical ranges overlap, the marker chooses the term whose midpoint is closest. The classical canon of larghissimo through prestissimo codified gradually across the 18th and 19th centuries.

See: Grant, Beating Time and Measuring Music (Oxford 2014), pp. 12–48.

Cross-rhythms § C

Cross-rhythm, or polyrhythm — fundamental to Sub-Saharan African ensemble traditions, Cuban son clave, and many Indian tāla compositions.

The two streams reset together at the start of each composite cycle — the least common multiple in beats. Beat A sounds at the upper pitch; Beat B at the lower. Try 2:3 (the hemiola) or 3:4 first; 5:7 and 7:11 occur in West African bell patterns and in the music of Conlon Nancarrow.

About § HIST

Johann Nepomuk Maelzel patented the metronome in 1815, having commercialised the design that Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel of Amsterdam had built in 1814. Most historians now credit Winkel with the actual invention.

Beethoven was an early adopter: he attached metronome marks to his symphonies. Many of these markings strike performers as implausibly fast, and a long debate has followed — see Sture Forsén & Harry Goldschmidt's studies, and the survey by Talsma (1980), continuing into 21st-century analyses of whether Beethoven's instrument was miscalibrated or whether modern performance traditions have simply slowed.

Metronome — Maelzel's Chronometer

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