> Daniel Taupin wrote:
>...
> > specification to result in quarter notes starting, not on each beat, but
> > on each "tip" (or "top"), so that (perhaps?) <quarter-note>=60 would
> > mean... 60 quarter notes in TWO minutes.
> >
Jed Wentz is an expatriate American baroque flutist (fabulous!) who lives
in Amsterdam and leads the group Musica Ad Rhenum. Several years ago while
attending the International Baroque Institue at Longy (Cambridge, MA, USA) I
heard him give a lecture about tempo in the 17th century and earlier. Until
Maezel's metronome in 1815, tempo indications were far from precise. They
relied on various a combinations of words (e.g., presto, adagio) and time
signatures, but no numbers. This clearly leaves no way at all for us to
know exactly what the tempi were. The first known attempt at a metronome
was by Loulie in 1696 (see http://www.franzmfg.com/history.htm). Jed had
built a model according to Loulie's description. It was simply a pendulum
with a calibrated and adjustable length of string. As best I recall, it was
not intended to be used directly to give a custom tempo for a particular
piece, but rather to establish a baseline for the verbal tempo indications
so people at that time would be able to know exactly what the words meant.
Now the point that relates to Daniel's comment is this: Even though there
was a written description of how to build and use this device, the
description was ambiguous as to whether the time interval of interest was a
one-way swing or a round trip. This led to a factor of two ucertainty, at
least to modern scholars, as to what tempo was really being indicated.
--Don Simons
