Wim Winters's Metrical Second Debunked
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- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
- This video debunks the existence of a pseudo metrical 'second' postulated by Wim Winters, based on Marin Mersenne's treatise 'Harmonie Universelle'
00:00 Introduction
00:26 L'Harmonie Universelle
01:28 Mersenne's Paradox
02:42 Debunking
07:20 Other Considerations
L'Harmonie Universelle can be found on IMSLP
Thanks for putting all this information in one place.
Winters’ attempt to connect the pendulum (and, by extension, the metronome) to the battuta-“twofold unity” etc.-relates back to the (deliberate?) misreading of “Takttheil” in Maelzel. “Part(s) of the intended time” is a poor translation, which means Winters and others can exploit it for a “double beat” understanding of the metronome. Takttheil simply refers to the major subdivisions of the measure, which are, of course, what the ticks of the metronome most often indicate…
Thks minirausch. You are right , there are correlation between the 2 mistakes. 'the part of the intended time' being as you mention a poor translation of the original notice which was written in French as the first patent was issued in Paris, followed by London a few months later.
Thank you, let's not forget that Mersenne repeatedly refers to the second as 1-3600th of an hour. It can be that easy.
Another exemple of blatant misinformation is in the NEMA article WW published where he quotes Furetière, trying to define the metrical second but forgets the crucial sentence: "Les montres à trois aiguilles montrent les minutes & les secondes." So: a clock with three hands indicates the minutes and seconds...
So true and with respect to Furetière , the definition of seconds ( and vibrations) as you rightly point out are explicitly defined in the 'Dictionnaire Universel' . The fact that Wim Winters keeps misinforming people is beyond my understanding.
There is a copy of Mersenne's Harmonie universelle, edited by François Lesure (Paris: Édition facsimilé de l'exemplaire conservé à la Bibliothèque des Arts et Métiers et annoté par l'Auteur (Paris, 1636)) which contains an important hand-written correction by Mersenne himself.
Here he strikes through the “famous” _avec le_ and writes _ou_ .
The resulting passage becomes “chaque tour ou retour” instead of “tour avec le retour”.
This edition is littered with such corrections by Mersenne himself.
So, even the main sentence Gadient and Winters use as proof of the metrical second is wrong!
But I honestly hoped it was true, because then the whole double beat theory would be forced to become a quadruple beat theory.
If 1s = 2s then 1m = 2m.
This would immediately double the MMs.
And also the frequency should change. Everything should be played an octave lower!
I would love to hear the Don Juan paraphrase by Liszt at the “authentic” quadruple beat and an octave lower!
Yes you are right about the correction and I forgot to mention it. Regarding Don Juan result , I prefer not to even think what i could be like ;)
Good one . Moreover by construction, the paradox which assumes that the pendulum mimics the hand movement is as absurd than Wim’s music . The hand movement is totally unequal in ternary mode as raising the hand is 2x time slowing than lowering it whereby the metronome is absolutely regular . To imagine such a thing is an insult to Mersenne . And what the video says is true . He never wrote that !
This is a lovely presentation; but I say again: the ultimate refutation of Messrs. Winters and Gadient is the ghastly result of their “theories” in performance. Their excessive reliance on “evidence”, whether real or imagined, is also a savage indictment of the “early music” movement, at its most extreme worst.
Thank you very much. For sure, debunking the music resulting from such a false theory is one approach and in the case of Winters music , it speaks by itself, as often the end result is painful to listen to and I am in complete agreement with you here . However my approach is to debunk the root cause of what produces this poor musical result, in other words the foundation of Lorenz Gadient theory itself. If you make a comparison with science, observation very often contradicts the theory (for instance Galillee stated that all objects fall at the same speed irrespectively of their mass, which was contrary to what he observed) . Same principle applies here in a way; some people may actually like Wim's music , even though to the ears of any good musician like yourself, it will be a total non sense and even though the double beat theory is built on sand. In this particular case, they can easily fall for this false theory if they don't have any other referential. Obviously, one could say that they can be convinced by consulting music method books from that period , but the sad reality is that they will never do that and continue to use UA-cam as their primary source of information and learning.
Daniel Waitzman, It is incomprehensible to me, too. Why do people like the music performed in whole beat tempi? I have a theory: When the English speak together I only understand a little, because they speak too quickly, I lack experience in listening to the language. But if the language is performed slowly, it is much easier for me to understand the details. Is it the case that some people are unable to perceive the details of the music in rapid tempi? And because it is difficult for them to recognize the inability to perceive the music in rapid speed, they blame fast tempi. Now, unfortunately, Wim Winters has got another musical spokeman - Tiago Mileu. Do you know his performances of Chopin opus 10? That play annoyed me so badly, I wrote this short commentary: «This is disrespectful to the composer Chopin, and this is disrespectful to the pianist chopin. «Historical Tempo - WBMP» is not true - no pianist achieved a virtuoso level with such slow tempo. This is a music-historical lie». It was not going to be any more - he shadowbanned me. I am already shadowbanned by WW.
Very good video, however I would like to know how you interpret what he says about ternary time in Wim's quote. He says that if you want the ternary measure to be as long as the binary, namely one second, you have to shorten the pendulum so that it now makes 3 "tours" in the same time it took to make 2 before. Wim incorrectly calls this tactus inequalis. If you wanted to play 3 against 2 with the measure having the same duration, you wouldn't have to change the length. At the same time, this seems to contradict what is said in the proposition 18 you quoted, since if one "tour" or "retour" marks the time of the measure, it really shouldn't matter whether it is a binary or ternary measure. There seems to be contradiction regardless of how you interpret it.
Thank you. In fact there is no contradiction . As a matter of fact in Mersenne time ( end of renaissance, beginning of Baroque) 'tactus' was still the norm and the unit of measurement for tempo was the semibreve whose standard duration was human heart pulse, independently of what was included in the measure no matter it was a binary or ternary time signature. Amongst the many flaws in Wim's theory, the most fallacious one is to make an association between pendulum movements and hand movements of a conductor. Neither Mersenne nor any serious music theoretician never wrote something like that. The only real association, clearly explained by Mersenne is the comparison between pendulum and heart pulse. In fact, any treatise on hand conducting music at the time , see my video : ua-cam.com/video/mj_fhZpQAI4/v-deo.html
refutes Wim's approach as in the frapper /lever (down/up) hand movements , the lever(up) could last twice the duration of the frapper (down) which is is impossible to accomplish with either a pendulum or a metronome, therefore proving the association between hand movement and metronome is fallacious. To cut a long story short , both the pendulum and the metronome are just timing measurements devices , using their constant oscillation's duration , no more than that.
Thank you for taking your time to answer. I also think that he does in no way state that there is necessarily any connection between the up and down movement of the hand (tactus) and the back and forth swing of pendulum, which the proposition 18 corollary 3 clearly indicates. However, I am still confused as to why he says that if you have a seconds pendulum at hand, and would like to go from binary to ternary measure (both being one second though), you have to shorten the pendulum. This seems to contradict what is said in the corollary 3 of the proposition 18, where it is clearly indicated that the 3 1/2 feet long pendulum can be used to mark a measure with the length of one second, regardless of whether it is binary or ternary. If you already have a 3 1/2 feet pendulum and would like the ternary measure to have the same time as the binary, why would you then have to shorten it?
@@johnericsson749 well as you say , you shouldn’t change the length of the pendulum. Trying to find any logical explanation which makes physical or mathematical sense is clearly a challenge with many of Wim ´s assertions given the foundation on which it it built is wrong to start with . Again the reason why Wim’s theory is problematic can be shown in ternary time.
Let’s take a 2/4 measure , in Wim’s double beat 2 ticks beat 1 , 2 ticks beat 2 . This can work
, in ternary time for instance 6/8 , 2 ticks for the first 3 notes , 2 ticks for the following 3 notes is problematic as the binary subdivision that works for the 2/4 measure doesn’t work here , so you have to play the 2nd note of each group of 3 notes blindly as you have no tick telling you exactly when to play it.
The only system that works and allow you to play every note with precision is to use the pendulum or the metronome , using 1 tick per beat in normal circumstances or to to use subdivisions if required ie have 1 tick per eight note in a 6/8 ie 6 beats .If you apply this common sense rule to double beat you end up with 12 ticks in a 6/8 measure which is frankly a joke.
Therefore Wim ends up inventing ideas to fit his theories and that don’t make sense . It it worth nothing that hand conducting is way more flexible , hence the possibility for hand conductor to slow down the downstroke or upstroke in ternary when 3 notes part of a sequialtera, hemiola or tripla .