Metronome - Views On The Metronome - Metronome, Strict Rhythm: Modern Performance Practice

Metronome, Strict Rhythm: Modern Performance Practice

The quotations above show the importance of the metronome in the 20th century ("Most music teachers consider the metronome indispensable, and most professional musicians, in fact, continue to practice with a metronome throughout their careers").

A strict rhythmic performance can be seen as a of Modern performance practice, which - though highly prevalent today - stands in stark contrast, with earlier performance practices.

The traits that distinguish Modern style : unyielding tempo, literal reading of dotting and other rhythmic details, and dissonances left unstressed.
Modern style : light, impersonal, mechanical, literal, correct, deliberate, consistent, metronomic, and regular. Modernists look for discipline and line, while they disparage Romantic performance for its excessive rubato, its bluster, its self-indulgent posturing, and its sentimentality. Richard Taruskin calls Modernism "refuge in order and precision, hostility to subjectivity, to the vagaries of personality." It is characterized by formal clarity, emotional detachment, order, and precision. —Bruce Haynes, The end of early music (Oxford University Press) Modern style It does not usually inflect or shape notes, use agogic accent of placement, add gracing at all generously, or use rubato (tempos are metronomic and unyielding).
Sol Babitz described it as "sewing machine" style, thinking of the rigidly mechanical rhythmic approach, the four equally stressed 16ths, and the limited flexibility in tempo that often characterizes performances of historical repertoire heard in Modern style. —Bruce Haynes, The end of early music (Oxford University Press) Modern style is the principal performing protocol presently taught in conservatories all over the world. —Bruce Haynes, The end of early music (Oxford University Press) Musicians of a hundred years ago, hearing a cross-section of present-day classical performances, would likely be struck by this primary difference between their performance practice and ours: Our performance practice assumes that a predictably regular beat is conscientiously maintained throughout a movement. We compensate our lack of timing flexibility by a very highly developed sense of tone-color and dynamic which, however refined and polished it may be, tends to abstract and de-personalize the music-making, underscoring its "absoluteness".
The principle of strict unity of beat within a movement has been part of our understanding and experience of classical music for so many decades now, that today's musicians and listeners can hardly imagine that less than a century ago the "standard" classical repertoire was performed under significantly different assumptions. —Robert Hill, Music and Performance During the Weimar Republic - Chapter 3: "Overcoming Romanticism": On the modernization of twentieth century performance practice

In the early 19th century the metronome was not used for ticking all through a piece, but only to check the tempo and then set it aside. This is in great contrast with many musicians today:

early nineteenth century . There was little interest in using the metronome to tick all the way through a piece of music. But this is how the device is used by conservatory students today. —Reflections on American music: the twentieth century and the new millennium : a collection of essays presented in honor of the College Music Society by James R. Heintze (Pendragon Press, 2000)

There are writers who draw parallels between today's modern society which is "ordered by the clock" and the metronomic performance practice of today's musicians.

While this section highlights the modern trends of strict mechanical performance as something widespread in the 20th century and beyond; it is interesting to observe that as early as 1860, there were people who firmly advocated this type of "modern" performance practice:

Correct time is considered indispensable; then why not use the Metronome. Hummel has recommended it in the strongest terms. My regard for it is such, that for twenty-five years or more I never taught a pupil without it. The beginner must only use the mechanical touch, for at least a couple of years. The music chosen for lessons and studies must be free from features, which require or admit expression. No crescendo, diminuendo, accelerando, ritardando, irregular accentuation, ff. pp. sfz. is admissible. —Franz Petersilea (ca. 1860)

While some welcomed the metronome in the 19th century, there were also critical voices, as is shown in the next section.