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WINNER of the 2023 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title AwardFollows the
fascinating story of musical timekeeping, beginning in an age before the existence of
external measuring devices and continuing to the present-day use of the Smartphone app.The
book opens with an exploration of musical time keeping as expressed in the artwork and
musical writing of the Renaissance, sources that inform our early understanding of an age
when music making was bound up with motions of the body and the pulsing of the human heart.
With the adoption of the simple pendulum and the subsequent incorporation of tempo-related
language, musicians gained the ability to communicate concepts of speed and slowness with
ever-increasing precision. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed the
development of a diverse array of musical time-keeping devices, yet it was not until the
nineteenth century that a single device combined the critical elements of accuracy,
functionality and affordability.Enter the portable and affordable, a triumph of
innovation that enabled musicians to establish and faithfully reproduce musical time with
accuracy and ease. From Beethoven to Ligeti, Moskovitz looks to a number of distinguished
composers who used or refused this revolutionary machine and explores the complicated
relationship that unfolded between the metronome, the musical world and practitioners in
other disciplines who sought to exploit its potential.Engagingly written, In
Pursuit of Musical Time will appeal to professionals and amateurs alike.
fascinating story of musical timekeeping, beginning in an age before the existence of
external measuring devices and continuing to the present-day use of the Smartphone app.The
book opens with an exploration of musical time keeping as expressed in the artwork and
musical writing of the Renaissance, sources that inform our early understanding of an age
when music making was bound up with motions of the body and the pulsing of the human heart.
With the adoption of the simple pendulum and the subsequent incorporation of tempo-related
language, musicians gained the ability to communicate concepts of speed and slowness with
ever-increasing precision. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed the
development of a diverse array of musical time-keeping devices, yet it was not until the
nineteenth century that a single device combined the critical elements of accuracy,
functionality and affordability.Enter the portable and affordable, a triumph of
innovation that enabled musicians to establish and faithfully reproduce musical time with
accuracy and ease. From Beethoven to Ligeti, Moskovitz looks to a number of distinguished
composers who used or refused this revolutionary machine and explores the complicated
relationship that unfolded between the metronome, the musical world and practitioners in
other disciplines who sought to exploit its potential.Engagingly written, In
Pursuit of Musical Time will appeal to professionals and amateurs alike.
329 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 27, 2022
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