Follows the fascinating story of musical timekeeping, beginning in an
age before the existence of external measuring devices and continuing to
the present-day use of the Smartphone app.
The book opens with an exploration of musical time keeping as expressed
in the artwork and musical writing of the Renaissance, sources that
inform our early understanding of an age when music making was bound up
with motions of the body and the pulsing of the human heart. With the
adoption of the simple pendulum and the subsequent incorporation of
tempo-related language, musicians gained the ability to communicate
concepts of speed and slowness with ever-increasing precision. The
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed the development of a
diverse array of musical time-keeping devices, yet it was not until the
nineteenth century that a single device combined the critical elements
of accuracy, functionality and affordability.
Enter the metronome: portable and affordable, a triumph of innovation
that enabled musicians to establish and faithfully reproduce musical
time with accuracy and ease. From Beethoven to Ligeti, Moskovitz looks
to a number of distinguished composers who used or refused this
revolutionary machine and explores the complicated relationship that
unfolded between the metronome, the musical world and practitioners in
other disciplines who sought to exploit its potential.
Engagingly written, Measure: In Pursuit of Musical Time will appeal to
professionals and amateurs alike.
