What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?

[Rev. Rye]

Last night, I went to a concert at Ravinia, and the pianist played Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" sonata and, before he started out, he talked a bit about how he preferred to keep to Beethoven's marked tempos, even if 138 BPM for the Hammerklavier might not be practical for most pianists. Indeed, it's impractical enough that the first video I found that played it at that tempo had to be sped up to reach that point:




Then I looked into the controversy, about how people were wondering how Beethoven's metronome could potentially have been defective, like maybe it was reading 138 BPM, but beating at a slower beat. They found the metronome, but parts were missing and the results were inconclusive. But it turns out that on the very first page of his manuscript for The Ninth, he might have put a clue that points to a simpler explanation: he didn't know whether to



Admittedly I'm not sure how true this is, or what this would make the proper tempo of the Hammerklavier (I suspect that, with the 10/9 ratio of tempi, it'd be closer to 124 BPM, which is probably more doable.)