I can confirm what Christian Mondrup writes. As far as I know the general
question is out of doubt. A metric indication <whole-note>=60 means indeed
sixty whole notes per minute.
However, if you listen to old recordings from the years 1890-1940, you
find that (at least some) people played with incredible high virtousity
and that they often played even *faster* than what was given by the
composers (obviously and confirmed by recordings where the composer play
themselves, the metric indication whas supposed to give only an average
measure which you get when you measure the temporal duration of the whole
piece and divide by the number of beats). The main difference to our days
is perhaps that we are used to "perfect" performance in a sense that top
law is "no wrong notes at all". In former days people might have seen that
a bit more relaxed because, in difference to us, they normally didn't know
the peaces in advance when they went to a concert. That's my I guess. But
nevertheless among these recordings I mentioned are quite a lot where you
can't hear any wrong notes at all. So, that's quite impressive...
Bernhard
