Fiddler's Beat

By Arnold Steinhardt

Good morning. I’m honored to be speaking to you at this 2012 Colburn School commencement and equally honored to teach at the school. I was born and raised in Los Angeles and it pleases me immensely to know that Colburn, with its faculty of distinguished musicians, is now the pride of the city and a magnet for some of the world’s most gifted young musicians.

Howard Pasamanick Photography

The streets directly surrounding Colburn are particularly meaningful to me. My father worked as a diamond setter in the jewelry district just a couple of blocks from here. When I was young, my mother often took me downtown by streetcar—yes, we had streetcars in those days—when she shopped at the Grand Central Market behind Colburn. We rode the Angels Flight railway down Bunker Hill—what a thrill that was! I had my first violin lessons at the G. Schirmer music store a few blocks away. And just a few years later, I made my debut at the age of 14 as soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in Philharmonic Auditorium, the orchestra’s then permanent home across from Pershing Square.

One of the most significant events in my young life also occurred in Philharmonic Auditorium, and that leads me to what I’d like to talk about today—how music has had an impact on me, and how you in this graduating class can use music to have an impact on the world. When I was ten or eleven years old, my parents took me to hear a recital by Mischa Elman, one of the reigning violinists of that era. I only remember one work on the program—Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne for unaccompanied violin. The magical sounds that poured out of Elman’s violin overwhelmed me, and tears unexpectedly filled my eyes. I had played the violin for four or five years by then, and quite honestly, the sounds coming out of my violin also made people’s eyes fill with tears, but for a very different reason. Not only Elman’s masterful playing touched me. It was also the heart clutching, almost frightening power of Bach’s music. I wondered for the first time what it would be like to learn the violin well enough to stand on a concert stage and perform such music for people.

Each of you graduating today undoubtedly has your own memorable first-time experiences with music. Maybe it was hearing a Beethoven symphony or Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring or a Gershwin tune or even Nirvana or The Rolling Stones. You probably remember tentatively picking up the instrument of your choice, then the exhilarating realization that you had a gift for it. And at some point you must have become aware that you held something more then a musical instrument in your hands, that you possessed the awesome ability to communicate indescribable beauty and emotion. It became the engine that drove you to put in the thousands of hours of practice necessary to nurture your abilities. And here you are, graduating from one of the world’s great music schools. Congratulations.

At this moment, poised for a career, you are the future midwives, so to speak, who will be delivering composers’ babies, their creations—and with it, you will have the heady power to affect your listeners in so many ways.

For one, you can entertain: That sounds so superficial, doesn’t it? When I perform in Canada, I have to fill out a form that lists me as an entertainer. I got a little huffy the first time. How dare they call me a mere entertainer. I’m an artist, I said to myself. But there is nothing wrong and everything right with the gift we have to make people smile in a world filled with much unhappiness. Think of that when you’re playing a Mozart Divertimento, a Beethoven Serenade, or when you land a fabulous job playing back up for Lady Gaga.

You can open hearts and minds: The Guarneri String Quartet, of which I was a proud member for its 45-year career, often performed Mozart’s D Minor String Quartet. Once, as we had just finished the work, an eight-year-old girl stood up from her seat and rushed up the aisle sobbing, followed by her concerned parents. To their relief, it turned out that their daughter was not ill at all, only overcome by the beauty of Mozart’s music. We had revealed something wondrous to this youngster.

You can heal: In Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, the American author, William Styron, relates his descent into depression and his thoughts of suicide. Quite by accident, Styron hears Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody for voice, viola, and piano at that moment and realizes that he cannot possibly end his life when such beauty exists in the world. Music becomes the turning point and the impetus for his eventual recovery.

You can comfort: On September 11, 2001, that terrible day in America, my family and I were in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. Three of us set out early on a hike, but when we returned later in the day, my wife, Dorothea, who had remained in camp, threw her arms around our son Alexej, and burst into tears. She had heard on our radio that the World Trade Towers had fallen, that the Pentagon had also been attacked, and that the United States was in an emergency state of alert. I found it impossible to put my brain around these shocking events, especially as we stood there surrounded by the most indescribable beauty. How could this have happened in our country, blessed as we are with such basic security and with no war on our soil in almost 150 years. For the first time in my life, I feared for myself, my family, and for all Americans. For the first time in my life, I had the awful feeling of facing a completely uncertain future. It was as if the ground had been removed from under my feet. Without knowing why, I went to our tent and took out the practice violin I’d brought along. For a good half hour I played Bach for myself by the little stream where we bathed daily. I hung on to Bach’s well-ordered world of beauty for dear life as a way to deal with the world that seemed to be falling apart all around me. Music comforted me, provided solace, began to put the ground back under my feet, and reminded me that it would always be there in times of need. That is the power that music holds for all of us.

You in this graduating class are now leaving the school’s nest and will soon step out into the professional music world. You might perform as soloist, play in an orchestra, form a chamber music group, or teach. You may surprise yourselves and be good at talking or writing about music or starting your own concert series.

But why am I suggesting all of these possibilities when classical music is dying? At least that’s what I’ve been hearing for the last thirty years. There was a drawing in the New Yorker magazine a long time ago depicting a desolate back alley littered with empty cans and bottles. The caption underneath was: “Life without Mozart”. I cannot imagine a life without Mozart or Bach or Beethoven or Schubert or Schumann or Mendelssohn or Brahms or Tchaikovsky or Bartok or Stravinsky. I refuse to believe that classical music is dying, but it certainly is changing as all things inevitably do. We live in a new world of breathtaking technological advances that are altering the way we think and feel; and also what music we listen to.

You’ve heard the joke about the so-called “new” Russians, Igor and Ivan, who meet on the street. The “new” Russians are the ones whose recently acquired wealth far outstrips their education.

“Ivan,” Igor asks, “do you know who Mozart is?”

“Nyet”, says Ivan.

“Well then, what about Bach and Beethoven? Do you know who they are?”

“Nyet again,” says Ivan. “Who are these guys, anyway?”

“I’m surprised at your ignorance, Ivan. They’re the guys who write music for cell phones.”

So, graduates, this is your world—the world of cell phones and the internet, of voice recognition and instant access on YouTube to everything from violinist Joseph Joachim’s 1903 recordings to present day composer Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir in which he brings some several thousand individual voices around the globe together in a cyber internet choir. Be curious rather than suspicious of this new world. Examine it! Accept it! Use it! And don’t be afraid to reinvent yourself when the spark of an utterly new idea suddenly hits you. If I told you that a deaf percussionist could have a brilliant solo career, you’d ask me to have my head examined. But that is exactly what Evelyn Glennie, the Scottish virtuoso percussionist has done. Mark Wood, who graduated from Juilliard as a traditional violinist, plays a seven string electric violin called “The Viper” with his rock band. Three students from the Curtis Institute of Music, Nicolas Kendall and Zachary de Pue, violins, and Ranaan Meyer, double bass, decided to turn their jam sessions for fun into Time for Three. The group’s charisma, enthusiasm, and seemingly limitless musical boundaries have made them a hot property on the concert circuit. And by the way, they can play Mozart beautifully.

Many years ago, a documentary film called High Fidelity was being made about our Guarneri String Quartet in rehearsal, travel, recording, and performance. The film crew seemed to show up everywhere—in New York City, Tampa, Florida, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Baden-Baden, Germany, and even Venice, Italy. I asked the producer, Wally Scheuer, who was putting up the money for High Fidelity as he had for many other documentaries, whether the filming wasn’t costing a great deal. Absolutely, Wally told me. Not only that, Wally confessed. He had lost money on every film he’d ever produced, including From Mao to Mozart which won an academy award. “Then why are you doing it, Wally?”, I asked. Wally thought about it for a moment and then he said, “I guess I just want to leave a few footprints in the sand before leaving this earth”.

I always remembered Wally’s words. Wouldn’t every one of us like to leave a few footprints in the sand before we’re gone? And I can’t help thinking that you young musicians with diplomas in your hands are about to make some significant footprints of your own.

Once again, graduating class, I congratulate you on this memorable day in your lives.

Now, get to work!

Hartz-4-Artz
your internet culture source

April 1, 2012
From the Music Desk: Arnold Steinhardt To Form New String Quartet

Arnold Steinhardt, first violinist of the Guarneri String Quartet that retired in 2009, has announced plans to form a new string quartet. Mr. Steinhardt recently told Hartz-4-Artz reporter N. Nam Trebor that he deeply misses the great string quartet literature after having played in the Guarneri Quartet for 45 years.

Steinhardt’s decision has caused some surprise in chamber music circles that he would again form a quartet after the Guarneri’s distinguished and long running career. There have also been lifted eyebrows over his choice for the new group’s name: The Steinhardt String Quartet. Steinhardt said that unlike the Guarneri and most other contemporary quartets that operate on a democratic basis, he plans to revert to a model more in fashion during the first half of the twentieth century. He pointed to the Busch and Capet String Quartets of that era that not only took their names from each group’s first violinist but also their powerful and unique musical vision. “Democracy is a messy and time consuming business,” Steinhardt explained at his Manhattan apartment where the interview took place. “After having played quartets for almost half a century, I feel that I have the wisdom and experience to run the show myself.”

One member of a high profile string quartet who requested anonymity expressed dismay over Steinhardt’s most recent quartet enterprise. “This goes against every democratic principal we hold sacred in the string quartet medium,” he said. “You’ve heard of the iPhone and the iPad. Never mind The Steinhardt String Quartet. Why doesn’t Arnold simply call his new group the iString Quartet since he seems to regard himself as the only one of any importance in the group.”

Steinhardt brushed off this kind of criticism with a laugh. “I’ve managed to find three people to join me who have voiced no objections whatsoever to the Quartet’s name or philosophy, and who apparently will agree without comment to all my musical ideas. You might call this a benign dictatorship but I call it the best of all possible worlds.”

The Steinhardt String Quartet, which plans to begin booking concerts immediately, has yet to release any information about its other three members. The press poster below is the first to be released by the new group. Arnold Steinhardt is second from the left with the sunglasses.

What makes a good teacher? For that matter, what makes a bad one? Some teachers merely pass on information. Others excite a student’s interest through their own love for the subject. Some teachers employ fear and intimidation. A very few manage to teach you how to become your own teacher. The craft (or is it the art) of teaching seems to be an elusive and mysterious thing.

I don’t remember much at all about most of my teachers but I certainly remember the very best ones. Take Mrs. Kindall, my sixth grade elementary school teacher who was tall, slender, and could turn you to stone with a look. On the first day of class she told us that everything would be fine if we worked hard and lived up to her high standards, but if we didn’t, God help us. Scared and thrilled at the same time, I worked my little tail off for Mrs. Kindall and learned a great deal.

Sixth Grade Class Photo; Mrs. Kindall (middle right) and Arnie Steinhardt (back row, far left).

There was Mr. Allen, my wood shop teacher in Junior High School. He held up a hand that had two-and-a-half fingers missing and told us to be careful using the band saw. We were careful. But Mr. Allen also inspired me to make a ping pong table in class—something I thought way beyond my capabilities.

My first violin teacher, Mr. Moldrem, had a special way with children. He taught rhythm by fruit. A quarter note was a pear, two eighth notes an apple, and four sixteenths a watermelon. When I panicked over my first triplet rhythm, Moldrem put me at ease. The triplet was just a pineapple, he explained.

Another violin teacher of mine, Toscha Seidel, a fiery Russian virtuoso, yelled at me when my playing displeased him and even hit me with his bow occasionally for emphasis. It was the if-you-can-survive-me-you-may-have-a-chance-at-a-career school of teaching. But there was another side to that school when Seidel played the violin. The intoxicating warmth of his sound and the unbridled freedom of his music making revealed unimagined possibilities.

It was said of my next teacher, Ivan Galamian, that he could teach a table to play the violin. Step by incremental step, he patiently built violinists into solid, intelligent players, No yelling with Galamian! On the contrary, he spoke so quietly at lessons that the last words of a sentence were often hardly audible. And yet I hung on every one of those words, for when studies with him finished, I knew I would be able to call myself a violinist.

I spent the summer of 1962 with my last teacher, the Hungarian violinist, Joseph Szigeti. He talked of “speaking” music—he called it “parlando”—as a way of infusing notes with clarity and emotional meaning. He asked me to imagine the unique sound of a particular orchestra instrument—say, the bassoon, the clarinet, or the French horn—in order to help capture the essence of a passage. Szigeti encouraged me to use imagery and to reference other music while learning a work: He compared one phrase to an impassioned dialogue between lovers, another to a piano work of Chopin. He told me to differentiate between music that should sound effortless and music in which the audience must sense the performer’s heavy task—Szigeti likened it to the labor of kneading dense dough. To this day, a full fifty years later, I still feed off much that Szigeti said.

Which brings me to something told to me after a concert in Miami, Florida, some years ago. Julian Kreeger, the presenter, generously had invited musicians and friends as was his custom to the Versailles restaurant for some Cuban cuisine. I found myself seated next to a violinist whom I had never met before and have never seen since. We chatted amiably as sangria, shredded pork, fried plantains, black beans, and flan came our way. Soon, I learned that he (let’s call him Sam) had once studied with Jascha Heifetz. I asked Sam the inevitable question about the great violinist’s abilities as a teacher. In answer, he told the following story:

Sam was assigned to play Ernest Chausson’s inspired Poème for Violin and Orchestra in Heifetz’s weekly master class. Naturally, he prepared the work to the absolute best of his ability in the days before. Sam, like all the other students, was in awe of Heifetz as a violinist. That was pressure enough, but Heifetz was also a very strict, even forbidding, and unpredictable teacher. At the class, Sam had barely finished playing the solo violin’s very first note—one that tapered gradually from loud to soft—when Heifetz tapped on the table with his pencil and ordered him to play the note again. Sam did so. Heifetz tapped once more. Sam played the note once more. Heifetz kept tapping with his pencil and Sam kept repeating that single note over and over, at least fifteen or twenty times, without Heifetz ever saying what displeased him. Each time Heifetz stopped him, Sam tried something different in order to figure out what Heifetz wanted. He started the note louder. Then he started it softer. He played it longer, then shorter. He employed a more intense vibrato. Then he tried almost none. Still, nothing pleased the master. Sam began wildly searching for more uncommon ways to play the note in a desperate attempt to satisfy Heifetz—but he never succeeded. The lesson mercifully came to an end when Heifetz signaled for another student to play.

Sam stormed out of the class in a rage. Heifetz had to be the absolute worst teacher in the world. What stupidity to mindlessly make a student play a single note over and over with not a word of explanation. Whenever Sam thought about this experience over the next few years, he would get mad all over again. The Heifetz encounter had not only been mean-spirited but also pointless. Even much more time elapsed, and to Sam’s surprise, he began gradually to see things differently. As nightmarish as that single note trauma had been, there were actually redeeming features to it. Sam reluctantly conceded that Heifetz had proded him to think creatively.

As we sat in the restaurant, Sam told me that twenty years had passed since he had managed to play only one single note of Chausson’s Poème for Heifetz, but he had completely changed his mind about the experience. By saying nothing directly, Heifetz had forced him to open his heart and mind as never before to a much larger world of creativity. Sam told me that he now considered Heifetz to be a great teacher.

So, was Jascha Heifetz a terrible teacher, or a truly inspiring one?

You be the judge.

Mr. Jascha Heifetz (born 1901, died 1987)
Violin Virtuoso Section
Heaven

February 2, 2012

Dear Mr. Heifetz,

Today, February 2nd, is your birthday. Happy birthday, sir, and my deepest thanks for the miracle of your artistry. I have listened to you play the violin throughout my entire life—actually my entire life plus nine months to be exact, since mother attended your concerts and listened to your recordings throughout her pregnancy with me.

In my childhood, I first heard you performing Beethoven’s Violin Concerto on our family’s records. The purity and shimmering tenderness of your playing brought unexpected tears to my young eyes. Then, as a young violin student struggling with the daunting difficulties of the instrument, your virtuosity astonished me. My teacher at the time, Peter Meremblum, you may recall had gone to school with you in Russia. Hardly a lesson went by without Meremblum’s making a comment about you. “Heifetz practices six to eight hours a day. Heifetz plays two hours of scales before he even looks at a piece of music.” The Heifetz campaign continued at home. My parents urged me to work harder so that I could become the next Heifetz. And when I slacked off they shook their heads sadly. How could I expect to be a Heifetz when I wasted time playing ball? At student concerts, “He’s no Heifetz” from my dad was the kiss of death.

The steady flow of comments was a testimony to your playing. You of all people know how difficult the violin is and that only a precious few have truly mastered it. Yet you had something beyond this. They say that an accident takes place when several unlikely things converge at the very same moment. You were the perfect example of a statistical improbability, or better said, a divine accident—the confluence of an ideal violinist’s body, an uncommon musical gift, and an obsessive need for perfection on every level. But there was something more. You seemed to have the nervous system of a humming bird: you could execute the minutest details at breakneck speed, shift moods in a split second, and recklessly dare all where others were prudently cautious. I listened to your recordings in disbelief. It was simply not possible for a human being to play with such wizardry. I despaired of ever even remotely approaching your level.

For a brief time as a teenager, though, I dared to think otherwise. I liked to play a little game with you, Mr. Heifetz, putting my assigned music on the stand and your rendition on the record player. It might be any number of pieces I worked on—Tchaikowsky’s Violin Concerto, Saint-Saëns’ Havanaise, or Sarasate’s Gypsy Airs. First I listened to you, shaking my head in wonder. Then I practiced the same piece myself. At the outset, the gap between us seemed too immense to cross, but with work I improved, and with improvement my spirits soared. I was catching up. Why, I was almost as good as you! Time to swagger over to the record player and listen to you again—you whose fingers moved so effortlessly, whose phrasing was like liquid mercury, whose playing seared with white heat one moment and teased playfully the next. “Jascha, Jascha”, I muttered despairingly as the record ended. You reigned over every would-be violinist, inspiring the industrious, crushing hope for those not supremely gifted, and stalking the lazy.

Finally, I heard you in person. Small, slender, but immaculately dressed, you stepped out onto the stage with a minimum of gesture. You did not accept our welcoming applause with deep bows but merely tilted your head in our direction. As you stood in front of the Los Angeles Philharmonic waiting for your solo entrance, you hardly moved, and even when you began to play, there were no excessive gestures, no grandstanding for the public, only those motions necessary to play the violin. Visually, you gave off a feeling of reserve, even aloofness, and yet the perfection of your delivery and the range of expression were astonishing. You challenged the most difficult of passages by rushing headlong into them—a display of fearlessness that took my breath away. Yet the lyrical moments had such tenderness and sensitivity that I wanted to weep. It was a performance of fire and shimmering light delivered in a container made out of ice.

Other violin virtuosos engaged me differently than you. When I listened to Fritz Kreisler, someone I know you admired greatly and who shares your birth date, I could easily imagine a benign and loving 19th century world lit by candlelight. The Hungarian violinist, Joseph Szigeti, my last teacher, affected me no less deeply but quite differently with his keen intellect and touching nobility. But when you played, Mr. Heifetz, my heart raced and the palms of my hands broke out in sweat. The improbability of your performances was almost too much to bear.

I risked listening to you only occasionally as my years in music school came to an end and I prepared for a concert career. Your playing was too seductive, too hypnotic. I wanted to sound like you—a common if forgivable trait in young players under the spell of a great artist. It was, of course, an impossibility, but also highly inadvisable. There could be only one Heifetz. My job was to become Steinhardt, whoever he might turn out to be and however long that would take.

Last February, a weekend seminar devoted to you took place in Athens, Georgia. Pianist Seymour Lipkin and I played a recital that included Dreams in the Twilight by Richard Strauss, an unpublished transcription of yours. The next day, God’s Fiddler, a new documentary about you, was shown. Afterwards, there was a panel discussion with Seymour Lipkin who had performed with you for U.S. soldiers during the Second World War (remember that scrawny but immensely gifted kid with the big glasses?), John and John Anthony Maltese, father and son, who are writing a book about you, Peter Rosen, the film’s producer, and yours truly. We had a lively enough discussion about you as a violinist, artist, and personality, but I couldn’t help thinking that you’ve been the subject of similar if less formal conversations over the course of my entire adult life. How many times have we musicians gathered together during rehearsal breaks, back stage before concerts, or over dinner and drinks to talk breathlessly about your performances of say, Paganini’s Perpetual Motion, Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, Brahms’ Violin Concerto, Bach’s Chaconne, or easily dozens and dozens of other works.

Several of us who revere you, Mr. Heifetz, have coined an expression for that rare individual in any field, be it music, sports, chess, dance, etc., who has reached your exalted pinnacle of excellence. “He’s a real Jascha”, we’ll say, conferring our highest possible praise. In your case, however, that pinnacle apparently came with a price. We rejoiced reading about your earliest days as a child prodigy and loved seeing the home movies of you as a wildly successful and fun loving young man. But then came painful stories about how you began to change over the years. Jack Pfeiffer, who was both our Guarneri String Quartet’s and your record producer at RCA for several years, told us that you once called him to discuss your latest recording project. When the conversation ended, Jack apparently asked you how you were. “I called you,” you said. “You call me if you want to know how I am”.

Most of us would find it hard to imagine how much the public’s expectations and your self-imposed standards must have pressed in on you. Perhaps your iron-fisted resolve was what inadvertently began to separate you from people. Perhaps it led you, along with the devotion and kindness you often showed to your students, to become quirky, suspicious, and mistrustful of many of your friends and colleagues.

And yet, year after year, and despite whatever else was taking place in your life, you continued to play the violin like a God for me, for us. Seymour Lipkin said that despite the highly dangerous circumstances of the war raging nearby, not once in the dozens of concerts you generously gave for United States troops did you play less than your very best. Perhaps, it was only through the violin that you could truly communicate from your heart to each one of ours.

Although you passed away in 1987, I still listen to your records. Each time you play, my heart races, the palms of my hands begin to sweat, and I shake my head in wonder.

Happy birthday, and thank you, Mr. Heifetz. You are a real Jascha!

My daughter, Natasha, once came home from her weekly piano lesson and asked to use my metronome—a request from her teacher. I told Natasha that I didn’t own a metronome. At the next lesson, her teacher insisted I go out and buy one. The clerk at my local music store looked at me oddly as he rang up the sale. “Isn’t it a bit late in your career to be buying a metronome for the first time?”

Well, yes. I must have been over forty years old at the time. But let me explain. I have very mixed feelings about the metronome, mainly because it’s so… metronomic. Is there anything in our lives that has the exact, undeviating pulse of a metronome? Even the beating heart at rest has a certain amount of variation to it—so does the stride of a long-distance runner, Ravel’s Bolero, a Rock and Roll beat, Old Faithful geyser, and even the earth’s daily turn around the sun, be it ever so minimal. Then why do we put such faith in the metronome?

It wasn’t always this way, at least not until 1815 when Johann Maelzel patented a device to be used as a tool for musicians under the title, an “Instrument/machine for the improvement of all musical performances called the metronome”. The word “metronome” is of Greek origin: metron = measure, nomos = regulating. How did musicians keep a steady beat before 1815? And did they even want to? There are accounts of Ludwig van Beethoven, ironically the first notable composer to indicate specific metronome markings in his music, playing his own compositions on the piano with extreme freedom—in effect defying the very gadget that he found so useful.

I suppose composers put down metronome markings in order to suggest an ideal tempo. But is there such a thing as an ideal tempo, and if so can a composer pull it out of thin air, or in Beethoven’s case, being stone deaf, out of his inner ear, especially after the notes are already written down on paper? Even more confusing to performers is the fact that many modern day composers such as Bartok and Shostakovich have often brazenly ignored their own works’ tempo markings when recording them. Worse still, you might not even like their tempos. I recently patrolled YouTube looking for performances of Edvard Grieg’s Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, a piano work I happen to love. To my surprise, I found a recording of Grieg himself performing the work—but much too fast!!!

It’s fun to bad mouth the metronome but I must confess having used one long before I ever considered buying the thing. The traditional tempo indications such as Adagio for slow, Andante for a walking tempo, and Presto for fast give one only a general idea, but a quarter note = 126 or 82 or any other number allows for no wiggle room. The metronome’s pulse is non negotiable. That steady tic-tic-tic-tic helped steady my rhythm at its shakiest and at least gave me an entry-level tempo to consider. Easiest, of course, was to shamelessly bum a metronome off my fellow musicians, or that being unavailable, to rely on the metronome by another name, the clock. Since 60, for example, indicates a beat of one second duration, musicians know the useful trick of saying or thinking “one thousand, two thousand, three thousand” to pretty much give “one second, two seconds, three seconds”. Sing John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever and voilà: 120 to the beat. Hum your favorite disco song and you should be at 126.

These days, I tend to regard metronome markings a bit more cavalierly. For example, I’ve been working on Bela Bartok’s Sonata for Solo Violin lately. In practicing Melodia, the Sonata’s third movement, I had carelessly ignored Bartok’s marking of 90-92 to the eighth note, but also his more traditional tempo indication of “Adagio”. I simply played what I felt. But when I checked, my tempo happened to fall quite close to Bartok’s metronome number. This leads me to believe that while 90-92 to the beat gives an exact tempo and “Adagio” a more general one, the intrinsic structure of music, its DNA if you will, has an inevitable tempo embedded in it as dictated by the notes alone. Of course, my “inevitable” tempo might not be your “inevitable” tempo, otherwise we would descend into a PC world of tempo sameness—a dreary thing to contemplate.

So is the metronome friend or foe? I’ll let the pianist Arthur Rubinstein weigh in with the last word on this. In the early stages of our Guarneri String Quartet’s career, we had the extreme good fortune to record ten different chamber music works with Rubinstein and to perform with him in New York City, London, and Paris. It was a chance of a lifetime to make music with a man who was more than a great pianist and more than a fine musician. Rubinstein was an artist who could create magic when he played. Yes, he produced a famously opulent sound and his musical taste was impeccable, but what struck me most was the unerring suppleness of Rubinstein’s phrasing and his ability to tease out the very essence of a rhythmic figure. Rubinstein possessed a kind of joyful daring in the way he played with time.

In preparation for our Paris concert, we rehearsed for an entire day at Rubinstein’s elegant Parisian home. With a backdrop of impressionist art hanging from the walls, we worked through the entire program, stopping only for a gourmet lunch served by Rubinstein’s wife, and for hugely entertaining stories that he showered on us between movements. As always, Rubinstein’s playing was alive with intelligence and fantasy, but often with a distinct disregard for the printed tempos. At one point, we in the Guarneri Quartet stopped playing, gathered around the piano, and pointed out to Rubinstein that we were not doing the indicated metronome marking in one particular movement of Fauré’s C Minor Piano Quartet. Rubinstein thought about it for a moment and looked up at us slyly. Then he said, “Fauré only meant the metronome marking for the very first measure, you know. After that, you’re on your own.”