260. TO RIES.

Vienna, April [March?] 30, 1819.

DEAR RIES,--
I am only now able to answer your letter of December 18th. Your sympathy does me good. It is
impossible for me to go to London at present, being involved here in various ways; but God will, I
trust, aid me, and enable me to visit London next winter, when I shall bring the new symphonies with
me.
I every day expect the text for a new oratorio, which I am to write for our Musical Society here, and
no doubt it will be of use to us in London also. Do what you can on my behalf, for I greatly need it. I
should have been glad to receive any commission from the Philharmonic, but Neate's report of the all
but failure of the three overtures vexed me much. Each in its own style not only pleased here, but
those in E flat major and C major made a profound impression, so that the fate of those works at the
Philharmonic is quite incomprehensible to me.
You have no doubt received the arrangement of the Quintet [Op. 104, see No. 238] and the Sonata
[Op. 106]. See that both, especially the Quintet, be engraved without loss of time. There is no such
hurry about the Sonata, though I should like it to appear within two or three months. Never having
received the previous letter to which you allude, I had no scruple in disposing of both works here; but
for Germany only. It will be at any rate three months before the Sonata appears here, but you must
make haste with the Quintet. As soon as you forward me a check for the money, I will send an
authority to the publisher, securing him the exclusive right to these works for England, Scotland,
Ireland, France, &c., &c.
You shall receive by the next post the Tempi of the Sonata marked in accordance with Maelzel's
metronome. Prince Paul Esterhazy's courier, De Smidt, took the Quintet and the Sonata with him. You
shall also have my portrait by the next opportunity, as I understand that you really wish for it.
Farewell! Continue your regard for me,

211. TO HOFRATH VON MOSEL. 1817. SIR,-- I sincerely rejoice that we take the same view as to
the terms in use to denote the proper time in music which have descended to us from barbarous times.
For example, what can be more irrational than the general term allegro, which only means lively; and
how far we often are from comprehending the real time, so that the piece itself contradicts the
designation. As for the four chief movements,--which are, indeed, far from possessing the truth or
accuracy of the four cardinal points,--we readily agree to dispense with them, but it is quite another
matter as to the words that indicate the character of the music; these we cannot consent to do away
with, for while the time is, as it were, part and parcel of the piece, the words denote the spirit in
which it is conceived. So far as I am myself concerned, I have long purposed giving up those
inconsistent terms allegro, andante, adagio, and presto; and Maelzel's metronome furnishes us with
the best opportunity of doing so. I here pledge myself no longer to make use of them in any of my
new compositions. It is another question whether we can by this means attain the necessary universal
use of the metronome. I scarcely think we shall! I make no doubt that we shall be loudly proclaimed
as despots; but if the cause itself were to derive benefit from this, it would at least be better than to
incur the reproach of Feudalism! In our country, where music has become a national requirement, and
where the use of the metronome must be enjoined on every village schoolmaster, the best plan would
be for Maelzel to endeavor to sell a certain number of metronomes by subscription, at the present
higher prices, and as soon as the number covers his expenses, he can sell the metronomes demanded
by the national requirements at so cheap a rate, that we may certainly anticipate their universal use
and circulation. Of course some persons must take the lead in giving an impetus to the undertaking.
You may safely rely on my doing what is in my power, and I shall be glad to hear what post you
mean to assign to me in the affair. I am, sir, with esteem, your obedient LUDWIG VAN
BEETHOVEN.
At this time Maelzel and Beethoven were on friendly terms. They arranged to visit London together,
proposing to take the Panharmonicon with them, and Maelzel eased Beethoven’s financial straits by
urging on him the loan of 50 ducats in gold. For the Panharmonicon Beethoven composed the ‘Battle
Symphony’, commemorating the Battle of Vitoria (21 June 1813). Maelzel suggested using patriotic
themes, Rule, Britannia and God Save the King; he also provided the overall compositional plan and
sketched in detail the drum marches and trumpet calls of the French and English
armies. Maelzel further induced Beethoven to score the piece for orchestra, with a view to obtaining
funds for the journey; thus scored, it was performed at a concert in Vienna on 8 December 1813 in a
programme that also included Beethoven’s Symphony no.7, and the marches by Dussek and Pleyel
(by the Trumpeter). The concert was repeated on 12 December, and the two yielded a profit of over
4000 florins. But Beethoven took offence at Maelzel’s having announced the battle-piece as his
property, broke completely with him, rejected the Trumpeter and its marches and held a third concert
(2 January 1814) for his sole benefit. Maelzel departed for Munich with his Panharmonicon,
including the battle-piece arranged on its barrel, and also with a full orchestral score of it, which he
had obtained from compiling the instrumental parts without Beethoven’s concurrence.
When Maelzel had the orchestral piece performed at Munich, Beethoven entered an action against
him in the Vienna courts. Beethoven also addressed a statement to the musicians of London,
entreating them not to support Maelzel, who arrived there in 1814 and performed the Battle
Symphony the following year.

)()()()

A Mechanical instrument of the Orchestrion type. It was invented by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel and
first exhibited by him in Vienna in 1804. The instrument was designed to play orchestral music, and
various accounts describe it as capable of imitating the sounds of the french horn, clarinet, trumpet,
oboe, bassoon, German flute, flageolet, drum, cymbal and triangle. The sounds were actually
produced by various flue, reed and free-reed organ pipes, as well as air-driven percussion devices.
The Panharmonicon achieved popularity in a period when such mechanical curiosities had great
public appeal and were frequently taken on tour; Maelzel’s instrument had many imitators, including
a virtually identical instrument (made by a fellow Viennese, Joseph J. Gurk) exhibited in Germany
and England in 1810 and 1811.
Maelzel’s Panharmonicon was taken to the USA in 1811 and was exhibited throughout the eastern
states between June that year and June 1812 by the Boston organ builder William M. Goodrich, after
which it was shipped back to Europe. In 1824 Goodrich built a replica of the instrument for a Boston
museum, which again was exhibited in various places for a year.
The repertory of the Panharmonicon consisted largely of popular marches and overtures, as well as
pastorales, rondos and similar pieces. Music by Haydn, Mozart and Cherubini (as well as many lesser
composers) was also performed on the instrument, the most remarkable example being Beethoven’s
‘Battle Symphony’ (Wellingtons Sieg, 1813), originally written for Maelzel’s instrument and later
transcribed for orchestra.
The Panharmonicon was a tour de force of musical instrument technology which later resulted in
the Orchestrion . Another instrument of this genre was the Apollonicon .

()()()()()

in order to get a publicity hit for his Panhamonicon, Maelzel convince Beethoven to accept his
program for a stereophonic battle symphony for twp automota celebrating Wellington's victory over
the French army near Victoria in Spain on 21 June 1813.

Maelzel collected army songs and trumpet signals, listed the restrictions on his music machins, and
made a sketch of the architecrure of the synphony. Beethoven finally agreed and delivered the score,
his op. 91 with short time, so that Maelzel could program the drums of his machines. But time passed
fast in Napoleon's era: Maelzel soon realized that putting the pins of the drums would take too much
time. He went back to Beethoven and convince him to transcribe the composition for two orchestras
and he volunteered to orgnanazi an “all star fastival” (as we would say today). He got everybody who
had a name and a rank in the musical life of Vienna to accept the role in a performance for the benefit
of the victims of the battle of Hanau. For this purpose, he was able to get the main hall of the Vienna
University.

The first performance on * December 1813 became a tremendous success, in fact, the biggest triumph
of beethoven during his life; the battle symphony had to be repeated on 12 December and six times in
1814. But since the symphony had been transformed into a normal composition, there was, in
Bethoveen's mind, no more p;ace for a mechanician. He paid back to Maelzel the money he had
invested in the enterprise and considered him out of the game. Mzelzel wes very upset, because he
had hoped to earn enough money for a trip with his machines to Amsterdam and London. So he stole
the orchestra score and had the work performed twice at Munich on 16 and 17 March 1814.
Beethoven was furius about it. He feared that Maelzel might ruin his chances in London- he saw
good prospect for his composition in England and he had dedicated it to the prince wales. So
beethoven filed a suit against Maelzel.

Maelzel certainly had questionable features in his character, but he never could have been as bad as
Beethoven described him. )

Maelzel was, however, already in Amsterdam, and there he was faced with a shocking discovery: a
Dutch mechanician had found the solution for the chronometer- the metronome with a sliding weight
at the top of the pendulum.
In 1817 Maelzel made peace with Beethoven : each paid half of the lawyers costs.

()()()()(
Enthused, Beethoven (according to Moscheles, upon Maelzel's suggestion) wrote the
composition The Battle of Vittoria in 1813, commemorating the victory of the Duke of

Wellington over the French forces, for this new instrument. Beethoven stated that he
had already conceived the idea of a battle, which was not practicable on the
Panharmonikon. However, Moscheles is probably more accurate, since the front page
of the Panharmonikon score states, in Beethoven's hand, that it was "written for Hr.
Maelzel by Ludwig van Beethoven." However, early in 1814 Maelzel and Beethoven
quarreled. Feeling injured, since the piece he had asked for had led to a huge
resurgence in Beethoven's popularity, Maelzel began making plans to take the
Panharmonikon and the composition to England. Maelzel surreptitiously obtained so
many of the parts for the battle as to be able to have a pretty correct score of the
work written out. He produced it in two concerts in Munich in March 1814. When
Beethoven in Vienna learned of this, he was outraged. Excited in temper, he initiated
a lawsuit against Maelzel (by this time on the way to the far reaches of Europe). At the
same time, he hastily had a copy of the Battle prepared and sent to the Prince Regent
(the future George IV) of England, in a mad chase across Europe, in hopes of thereby
preventing Maelzel from producing the piece. As Thayer notes, it was a costly and
utterly useless precaution; Maelzel did not receive any incentives to offer orchestral
concerts, and the score sat buried in the Prince's library, was ignored and never

acknowledged. These antics further disrupted work on the final revisions of Fidelio.
“I have thought for a long time of giving up these nonsensical terms allegro,
andante, adagio, presto, and Malzel’s metronome gives us the best opportunity
to do so…” (Letter to von Mosel, 1817)

Grave — slow and solemn

Largo — very slow

Adagio — slow and stately (literally, "at ease")

Andante — at a walking pace

Moderato — moderately

Allegro moderato — moderately quick

Allegro — fast, quickly and bright

Vivace — lively and fast

Presto — very fast

Prestissimo — extremely fast

Grave — 20-40 bpm

Largo — 40–60 bpm

Adagio — 66–76 bpm

Andante — 76–108 bpm

Moderato — 101-110 bpm

Allegro moderato — 112–124 bpm

Allegro — 120–139 bpm

Vivace — 140 - 160 bpm

Presto — 168–200 bpm

Prestissimo — more than 200 bpm

in 1812, Dietrik Nikolaus Winkel (b.1780 Amsterdam d. 1826) found that

a double weightedpendulum (a weight on each side of the pivot) even when at a
short length, would beat slow tempos, andthus make the metronome
portable. After having seen the invention in Amsterdam, Johann
NepenukMaelzel, a Frenchman, appropriated Winkel's idea through some
questionable practice. He used Winkel’sdesign, but included the scale of
divisions or segments discussed earlier, and then patented the device underthe
name 'metronome'. In 1815, he began manufacturing "Maelzel's" Metronome in
a factory just outside ofParis. It has been in highly successful use to this
day. Swiss, German, French, and American manufacturerswho vie with each
other for the limited business available continue to manufacture it. Following a
lawsuit,Winkel did gain recognition as the original inventor of the instrument;
however, Maelzel never lost theprestige as its creator. In fact, composers
indicate the desired tempo by a symbol for a note value perminute, e.g. (
q
) preceded by ‘M.M.’, which means “Maelzel's” Metronome. The entire symbol
usually lookslike this: (MM
q
= 72)According to most reports, Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827) was the
first important composer to useMaelzel's metronome. However, recent
scholarship indicates that Beethoven’s markings are not reliabletempo
indications since he frequently changed his mind about them and more
importantly, his publishersoften misprinted or altered his instructions. This
finding is true for most other composers at the time and forsome time to follow.

3. The metronome and other clockwork devices.

Zacconi (1592, f.20v) had associated the movements of a clock with
musical movement, though purely as a way of illustrating how
various note values move at their own speeds (just as do the
differently sized wheels in a clock). But mechanical clocks had been
common in Europe from the 13th century, with their invention
reputedly going back to the 10th century. Apparently the first writer
to suggest setting tempos in terms of a clock was William Turner
(1724), who described the speed of crotchets in reversed ¢
mensuration as ‘counted as fast as the regular Motions of a Watch’.
Similarly Robert Bremner in the second (1763) edition of
his Rudiments lamented that his earlier (1756) suggestion of a
ubiquitous pendulum (see §2) had not been well received, so he
now proposed the use of a clock ‘and count the seconds, or motions
of the pendulum in fours’. Tans’ur (1746) seems to be suggesting
the same device.
The theory that Christoph Semmler of Halle (1669–1740) invented a
metronome in the 1720s seems to derive only from a statement in
Kandler (1817) in an article that is otherwise largely taken straight
from Maelzel’s publicity leaflet. As already mentioned,
Renaudin’s plexichronomètre of 1784 apparently worked like a
musical box. In 1786 the French physician Jacques-Alexandre-
César Charles devised a clockwork chronomètre musical some two
metres high (Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, Paris, Inv. 1435)
and he apparently continued to modify it until 1802 when it was
seen in action by J.F. Reichardt (1804). In 1798 Anthony George
Eckhardt patented in London a clockwork time-keeper calibrated in
‘moments’ (ten per second) in degrees from five to 100 moments: a
barrel drove three interlocking toothed wheels that operated
hammers to beat at the required interval of moments. There is no
trace of this actually having been manufactured. In 1800 G.E.
Stöckel invited subscriptions for his ‘Chronometer’, built like a large
wall-clock with a 2' (61 cm) pendulum and clearly audible hammers
and bells. In spite of written support from J.F. Reichardt, Stöckel
had little success; at least, in 1803 he advertised a smaller
‘improved model’, again inviting subscriptions but this time being
more cautious about the terms under which he would actually
manufacture the Zeitmesser. This time too he had a longer list of
famous supporters, including Reichardt, Türk and Rochlitz, but there
is again no evidence that the device was ever manufactured.
Among several other new machines of those years, most of which
are known only from a brief reference or description, are: a time-
keeper by John Chancellor (Coggins, c1822); a chronometer by
Henry Smart, brother of Sir George Smart (Coggins, illustrated in
Harding, 1938, pl.18), built after the manner of a barrel organ and
probably deriving from Eckhardt’s machine; a machine in the shape
of a pocket-watch made by Sparrevogn of Copenhagen (1817); a
new pendulum by Despréaux (described by Fétis as representing
no advance on Loulié’s original invention of 125 years earlier); a
machine for beating time by Charles Claggett (c1793), the
Timonicon (c1825) of Mr Galbreath and a ‘musical timekeeper’
(c1829) by J.B. Barnard (all documented in Kassler, 1979); and
other devices by Siegmund Neukomm (1815) and perhaps by
Charles Neate in London (mentioned in Lichtenthal, 1826, as
‘Neath’, though this may refer simply to Neate’s description of the
Wright pendulum).
This quantity of new machines and of literature describing them was
to some extent symptomatic of a general feeling that the time was
ripe for a machine that would gain universal acceptance. But it also
had two direct consequences. It stimulated considerable interest, so
that many leading musicians were concerned with the question of
precise tempo even if (or perhaps because) they were dissatisfied
with the chronometers that were by then available. And it brought
with it a substantial body of expertise and experiment. In short it
prepared the ground for Maelzel, a man with relatively little technical
or scientific knowledge but considerable musical skill, mechanical
experience and business sense.
None of the earlier attempts had achieved any wide or lasting
success. Maelzel came to the chronometer about 1808, having
spent some years making and demonstrating mechanical
instruments of various kinds, both musical and non-musical; and he
then devoted over 15 years to refining and promoting his device.
The result was a metronome of such perfection that modern
metronomes (in the strict sense) differ little from his final model.
To judge from descriptions, his prototype (first mentioned in AMZ, 1
Dec 1813) was an ungainly pendulum machine somewhat like that
of Stöckel; and its only significant characteristic was that it
calculated tempo in terms of beats per minute. It had a range from
48 beats per minute to 160. The story of Beethoven’s having
composed his canon in honour of Maelzel, Ta ta ta, in 1813, must
now be discarded as a fiction of Schindler’s (partly because it
includes the word ‘Metronom’, not otherwise known before 1815;
see Howell, 1979), but the AMZ report of 1813 states that both
Beethoven and Salieri were interested in the new machine. And that
is a clue to Maelzel’s flair for publicity, one of the qualities without
which he would probably have had no more success than the many
other makers and inventors mentioned in this article.
On a promotional journey in 1815 Maelzel demonstrated his
prototype to Winkel in Amsterdam. Winkel had created something
similar, though the small scale of his operation and his general lack
of promotion meant that he would never have achieved international
success (an example of his 1814 machine is in the
Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, with the inscription ‘Erfunden von
D.N. Winkel in 1814 den 27 November in Amsterdam’; it is
reproduced in Kolneder, 1980, and van Tiggelen, 1997). On the
other hand, Winkel had the clue to reducing the size of the machine,
namely a double-ended pendulum which effectively quartered the
necessary length of the stem. (This in turn probably owed much to
the investigations of the English scientist Henry Kater (1777– 1835),
who is famous for having brought the understanding of the
pendulum to such a point that it could be used to define the exact
length of a foot.)
There can be little doubt that Maelzel treated Winkel
unscrupulously. According to a later inquiry (reported in de Vos
Willems, 1829), Maelzel offered to buy the invention from Winkel.
When his offer was refused he simply went to London and Paris,
patenting in both cities a new machine – for which he devised the
name ‘metronome’ – incorporating Winkel’s crucial insight.
Kolneder (1980) has shown that Maelzel had in fact planned to set
up the London factory some years previously, as noted in
the AMZ article of 1813; and when he met Winkel he was on his
way to London with his financial support organized, so Winkel’s
contribution may have been only a refinement. But Maelzel must
nevertheless have worked quickly. The patents were ratified on 1
June 1815 in London and on 14 September 1815 in Paris. By the
end of 1816 he had issued a short guide to its use in French (1816);
and his letters to Breitkopf & Härtel state that he had also published
a Metronomic Tutor in English. Further to that, he sent metronomes
to 200 composers all over Europe (see Haupt, 1927, p.130, letter of
8 April 1817) – a further example of his commercial initiative. On 18
July 1816 the Leipzig AMZ was able to announce that the new
metronome was being manufactured in London and in Paris, to
regret that Maelzel had not seen fit to entrust his work to German
manufacturers, and to state that metronomes from Paris were
already on sale at Breitkopf & Härtel’s shop.
This new 1815–16 metronome – the one on which all the surviving
Beethoven markings were made – was a metal box some 31 cm
high; and although the pendulum worked like the later one its
calibrations were only from 50 to 160 – in twos from 50 to 60, in
threes from 60 to 72, in fours from 72 to 120, in sixes from 120 to
144 and in eights from 144 to 160. (Examples survive in the
Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Vienna (see fig.4); the private
collection of Paul Badura-Skoda, Vienna; and at the Brussels
Conservatory, Inv. 639). Within a few years several major
composers had issued Maelzel Metronome (MM) numbers for
works by themselves and others; and even though many
composers soon concluded that the supposed accuracy of
metronome indications was musically speaking a chimera,
Beethoven’s acceptance of it was in itself enough to ensure survival
for Maelzel’s system.
Over the following years Maelzel continued to change and refine his
metronomes. Already in 1817 he was making silent gravity-driven
metronomes (fig.5) which he abandoned in 1821 as being
unpopular. From 1821 he started making all his metronomes in
mahogany rather than metal. In 1828 a clock maker in Amiens
named Bienaimé-Fournier had evolved a machine (an example is in
the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, Paris) with three
‘improvements’ on that of Maelzel: ability to remain regular even
when not on a horizontal surface; the possibility of changing tempo
without stopping the machine; and the addition of a device to strike
every two, three, four or six beats. Fétis enthusiastically endorsed
this as the successor to Maelzel’s machine. But Maelzel, with a
characteristic sense for the difference between important and
unimportant matters, incorporated only the striking device into his
subsequent metronomes. At some stage in the 1820s he also
reduced the height to 20 cm; and later expanded the calibrations:
they now ran from 40 to 208, in twos from 40 to 50 and in eights
from 160 to 208, otherwise precisely as on the earlier metronome.
These numbers and these limits have become standard for nearly
all musical time-measurers since then, to such an extent that a
figure such as crotchet = 130 has been described as ‘irrational’
simply because it does not appear on Maelzel’s system.
Since then the clockwork metronome has remained practically
unchanged. Slightly smaller models in a plastic case have been
developed; but they usually retain many of the original Maelzel
features: a double-ended clockwork-driven pendulum; a stem with
ridges for positioning the upper weight, which is trapezium-shaped
and has a small spring to hold it in position; calibrations written on a
scale mounted behind the stem; relatively meaningless tempo-
words added to the calibrations; a bell arrangement for downbeats
activated by a little slider at the side; and a triangular (or obelisk-
like) shape with a cover on the front that must be taken off before
the metronome is operated.
Attempted refinements have been few and mostly short-lived.
Hellouin (1900) mentioned French patents by Fayermann (1853,
no.17880), Lesfauris (1854, no.20531), Janniard (1859, no.43290),
Carden (1865, no.69207) and Metzger (1868, no.80809) as well as
what may have been the earliest electric device by Gaiffe (1892);
there were certainly many more in other countries. In response to
Saint-Saëns’s complaints that most metronomes were inaccurate
Léon Roques devised a métronome normal which was cheap, easy
to make, silent, and calibrated with 90 gradations from 30 to 236
(Brussels Conservatory, Inv. 1691 and 1697). In 1893 J. Treadway
Hanson proposed (but probably did not execute) an extension that
could actually beat time. More successful has been the Swiss-made
pocket metronome: built like a pocket-watch, it has one hand that
swings and clicks at the correct pace and another hand that can be
moved through all degrees from 40 to 200.
Metronome (i)
4. Electric and electronic devices.
Such is the range of techniques made available by electronic
technology that it may never be possible (or interesting) to detail the
various ‘metronomes’ that have been developed along these lines.
The number of new devices far exceeds that known from the years
1780–1830, but few have aroused much interest; and the advent of
the synthesizer perhaps made most of them all but obsolete.
For most mid-20th-century teaching purposes an electric box is
used with a light on top that flashes the beats but can be supported
by an audible click (such as the model by Franz); again the tempo
numbers tend to follow Maelzel’s last system. More recently smaller
versions have been made, often equipped with an earphone (such
as the model by Seiko). More elaborate devices have been made to
cope with complex cross-rhythms, ‘irrational’ tempos and gradual
change (see Henck, 1979 and 1980), as demanded by avant-garde
scores. There have also been machines that can calculate the
tempo of a received signal.
But it may well be true that the metronome still to some extent
carries with it the stigma of being meaningless and unmusical in its
aims (as in uses (i) and (ii) outlined in §1 above); and this could
hamper the success of new inventions to cope with uses (iii) and
(iv).