Present Music varies tempo with concert of 100 metronomes
If you’re keeping a list of items that are disappearing from daily life, you might want to add the metronome.
The ticking tempo-keeper that has been a staple of musicians’ lives for nearly two centuries is quickly disappearing, replaced by smartphone metronome apps that cost a fraction of an actual metronome and take up no space in a gig bag or instrument case.
So who cares? Present Music cares.
Milwaukee’s new-music ensemble decided to program György Ligeti’s “Poeme symphonique” (1962) for 100 metronomes, as part of its Giants in the Chamber concerts Feb. 16-19. Present Music executive director Meaghan Heinrich explained that this concert program is unusual for the ensemble, in that it is built entirely of music by dead composers, including Debussy, Stravinsky, Satie, Joplin and Piazzolla.
Ligeti’s “Poeme” calls for the metronomes, all set to different tempos and only partially wound up, to start ticking en masse. The ensuing clack and clatter fades to silence as, one by one, the metronomes stop ticking.
Heinrich said artistic director Kevin Stalheim emailed her on New Year’s Eve afternoon, saying he wanted to do “Poeme” during the February concerts.
“I had a feeling that it was going to be tough to come up with the metronomes,” she said, knowing that few people use wind-up metronomes anymore.
Beethoven and Salieri were early adopters of the metronome, which first appeared in the early 1800s. Electric metronomes appeared in 1938, followed by small, battery-operated digital models in the 1970s, both pushing the windup models toward obsolescence. Today, wind-up and digital metronomes are still made, but phone apps are taking over.
“I started reaching out to the community right away for metronomes,” Heinrich said. Thanks to social media, metronomes began arriving shortly thereafter. She also looked into renting them as a backup plan.
Heinrich has received about 25 metronomes, some donated, some loaned, from the Milwaukee area, and others from friends and Present Music fans, a few as far away as Ohio and Alabama. But it soon became clear that gathering 100 of the mechanical tickers by midFebruary was going to be impossible. Rental options, including the Wittner company in Germany (a metronome-maker since 1895), and Gregory Oh, a Toronto pianist and conductor, would involve expensive fees and possible customs delays.
“Then (composer) Paul Drescher put me in touch with a person in San Francisco, (percussionist) Suki O’Kane, who has a full set of 100 Wittner 6-inch metronomes, and was willing to lend them to us for just the cost of shipping,” Heinrich said, with a note of
triumph in her voice.
The package has left San Francisco, with Heinrich tracking its progress online. Present Music will use all of the metronomes people have donated and lent, making up the difference with ones from O’Kane.
Since each concert of the three concerts will be performed in a different venue, with a different arrangement of audience and metronomes, each audience’s experience will be unique.
Check out a video of Ligeti’s composition for 100 metronomes” at bit.ly/2lkwTdK.