In Reply to: Rereading Anton Schindler's Life of Beethoven posted by Jay Buridan on June 18, 2017 at 12:45:50:
. . . because his accounts are often so self-serving. I read his biography a couple of years ago, and I felt it was well worth it, as long as one maintained a certain skepticism about Schindler's bragging.Regarding the metronome marks, there's a book by Czerny (who, as you know, was student of Beethoven), which lists Czerny's recollections of how fast Beethoven actually played his works (or wanted his works to be played). (I forget now, but it may only list markings for Beethoven's works involving piano.) In any case, the metronome marks suggested in Czerny's book align VERY CLOSELY with the metronome indications in Beethoven's actual scores. There are of course some discrepancies, but these discrepancies are not significant AFAIR.
Although Moscheles has a valid point too (i.e., to play as your spirit dictates), I'm happy that we have Beethoven's (and Czerny's!) metronome markings as a kind of starting point on the question of tempo in Beethoven's works.
Edits: 06/18/17
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Follow Ups
- Yeah - Schindler gets a lot of grief from biographers and scholars. . . - Chris from Lafayette 17:51:57 06/18/17 (0)