Canon for Maelzel

Musicians soon realized the value of a predictable timekeeper. Not everyone’s pulse is steady enough to help them keep the beat in ensemble music. The metronome, developed simultaneously by several inventors, would provide a consistent audible and visual cue about the tempo. Not everyone welcomed giving this task over to a machine; compare it to recent proposals to have cars driven by robots or controlled remotely. But the metronome gradually took hold and is still often praised for its value in a practice setting. It was patented by Johann Maelzel (1772-1838), who lived and worked in Vienna during the years that Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1828) was active. The two men were on familiar terms for many years. Those terms ranged from good—as when they gave joint concerts featuring Beethoven’s symphonies and Maelzel’s various musical machines—to the bad—as in 1814 when Beethoven described Maelzel as a “rude, churlish man, entirely devoid of education or cultivation.” Despite that judgment, Beethoven may have been the first composer to include metronome markings in addition to, or in place of, the older affective tempo indications (such as Allegro, Andante, etc.). And a few years prior, in 1812, Beethoven composed a light-hearted canon to celebrate Maelzel’s invention. The joke, ultimately, may be on Maelzel and his metronome.

(c) Jason Stell