All in good time
Remember the eerie sounds when astronauts discover the monolith? Poème, conceived in 1962, even has its own score and specific instructions for its performance: “The work is performed by 10 players under the leadership of a conductor. “Each player operates 10 metronomes. The metronomes must be brought onto the stage with a completely run-down clockwork. The players wind up the metronomes... at a sign from the conductor, all the metronomes are set in motion.” The result is no doubt cacophonous and a performance can last around an hour, but apparently after a while, patterns and rhythms present themselves as the 100 metronomes, all set at different tempos, do their stuff. Would it encourage the collector to collect the things? Probably not, but there are those that do. Who invented the device is clouded by the passage of time. It was Galileo in the 16th century who first realised the potential of a pendulum, but 100 years passed before the principle was used in a clock.
A string of inventors laboured to produce a reliable metronome throughout the 1700s, culminating in 1814 with what Dutchman Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel (17771826) called a “musical chronometer”.
Winkel was no businessman, however and, having failed to patent his invention, it was copied a year later by the German inventor Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (1772-1838) an entrepreneur with the ability to seize on the ideas and works of others and use them to his benefit.
Strangely, he made just 200 to send out to friends, composers and musical instrument makers for their comments and modifications, one of whom was his friend Beethoven.
Maelzel was one of the people who broke into the home of the by-thenstone-deaf Beethoven when they heard a loud crash. They found the composer holding a saw and standing over his piano after cutting off its legs. He hoped he might hear its notes when he placed his ear to the bare floorboards.
It didn’t work, so Maelzel made him a series of ear trumpets but Beethoven was a fan of the metronome. While he could not hear the beat, he could see the swing of each stroke and suggested a number of different time settings for the device.
Himself a musician, Maelzel is best known for his clockwork automaton instrument-playing “toys”, which earned him a fortune. In the 1820s, he toured New York with his “panharmonicon” that played all the instruments of an entire military band; a life-size trumpeter; rope-dancing automatons; singing bird boxes; a Turk chess-player; speaking dolls and the Conflagration of Moscow, a moving panorama recalling the events of October 1812.
It did him no good though. A chronic alcoholic, he died on a ship bound for Philadelphia sailing from Cuba, where poor attendances at a show left him out of pocket and depressed.
He drank himself to death and was buried at sea, leaving an otherwise lucrative company making musical accessories based in Paris.
Since its invention there have been countless patented subtle variations to improve the original and these make the device of interest to collectors, although the basic obelisk design remained.
Names to watch out for include Philippe-Nicolas Paquet (b. 1823) who took over running Maelzel’s Paris company on his death; separate London makers Robert Cocks, Johann Baptist Cramer and Barnett Samuel, the latter famous for their gramophones, and the company founded by Gustave Wittner, which continues today. Novelty metronomes such as those designed as owls, cats and penguins make amusing gifts for young musicians, while the company founded by the great American clockmaker Seth Thomas (1785-1859) even produced a metronome for use in training court stenographers. It made musicians’ metronomes from 1887 until 1984. Vintage metal-cased examples are popular with collectors, while a Cadencia vintage pocket metronome would be a real find. Made in Switzerland and retailed by Palmer, the chrome case has a thumbwheel at 10 o’clock to alter tempo and operates like a stopwatch with a single hand pivoting from its anchor at six o’clock. They’re worth £80-£120 at auction, the same price as a standard, wood-cased metronome.