New-York tribune., 1918-05-26
What Is Your Tempo?

This is an age of speed, the critics are
fond of telling us. But has it really
speeded up the actions and thoughts of
all of us as individuals? An interesting
argument that it has comes from Mr..
Ernest Newman in "The New Witness"
He is discussing musical tempo and sug-
gesting that our standard of musical
speed is likely to alter by reason of our
pace in life-especially by reason of "the
greater rapidity Of our daily means of
locomotion':
We know that our standard varies ac
cording to the state of our nerves; that
a watched kettle never boils may not be
true effectively, but it is very near being
true subjectively. May not the nerves of
humanity vary greatly in the course of
hundred years as the nerves of the in.
dividual do in the course of day? Is it
credible that the standard of time should
be the same in people who get from Bir
mngham to London in two hours by train
as it was in people who took two or three
days to do it by coach? Strange as it
may seem, there were people, only few
years ago, whoA used to get run over by
horse-drawn vehicles. How they managed
to do it is mystery, but they did. Rem
dered more agile, quicker in our calcula-
tions, by the necessity of avoiding motor
cars, horse cab, as it bears down on us,
is not thing to be taken seriously now.
Surely this change in our notions of
ordinary speed must be affecting our no
tons of speed in music. May it not be
that we unconsciously want all old music
faster than our fathers wanted it? The
metronome tempo l listen to day in
Elizabeths Prayer may be precisely the
one that Wagner adopted at the first per-
formance of the opera, yet the music may
seem much slower to me than it did to
Wagner then. One is reminded of the
cynic's reply to the anxious statstician
who asked why married men live longer
than single men-they don't; it only
seems longer. The ordinary tempt in
Wagners older music may not be actu-
ally slower than the markings in the
score; it is sufficient explanation of our
weariness if they seem slower.
Of course, the subjective sense of time
elapsed does vary vastly, as Mr.. New
man points out. Not only marriage af-
fects it! Most of us have experienced the
queer illusion of doing off and dreaming
through long and elaborate episode-an
hours job, roughly speaking-only to
waken and find that but a minute or 50
has actually elapsed. The actual tempo
of life, the speed of our motions, of our
thoughts, is somewhat different matter.
Rhythm enters into it, and rhythm is
largely a matter of certain fundamental
operations such as breathing and heart
beat, walking and running, which cannot
greatly vary from one generation to an
other because of inescapable physical
limitations.
controlling factor than the mere speed of
locomotion which Mr.. Newman stresses.
Automobiles are universal in America,
yet any city person who visits the coun-
try, Or any Northerner who visits the
South, is impressed by the leisure of the
atmosphere. Cars or no cars, folk amble
along much as before. Uncrowded
spaces seem to make for calm whatever
the speed limit. Nor do all modern
speeding-up inventions increase the
speed of individual motions. The tele-
phone has probably transformed modern
life more essentially than has the auto
mobile; yet the telephone makes rather
for saving of hustle than not. There
was time when automobiles undoubt-
edly Jared nerves and accelerated dis
positions and tempers. Now that thew
have become silent and dust-proof and
easy-swlnging we doubt whether their
mere rate-per-hour affects individual
tempo very greatly We can recall
crowded moments behind a hard iawed
trotter that were far more nerve-rack-
ing and hair-raising than any forty
miles an hour in touring car.
1t is ticklish business guessing the
speed of people or of an age. There
are always all sorts of people and all
sorts OF communities. There are even
marriages that always seem short, we
dare wager against the cynic.
foxxv