In 1817, Beethoven added metronome markings to some of his earlier music, including his first eight symphonies.  While the composer's initial reaction to the metronome was one of annoyance—"it is silly stuff; one must feel the tempos"—Mälzel, the inventor of the metronome, understood the importance of convincing Beethoven to endorse his new invention.  Eventually, Beethoven did give his approval and seemed to recognize the value of indicating the tempi for his music.  Later, for his ninth symphony, he dictated metronome markings to his nephew Carl, as he was preparing it for publication. 

In the century and a half after Beethoven's death, performances of his symphonies often varied considerably from his metronome markings, especially where conductors felt that a marking was too fast or was unsatisfactory in some way, and players have sometimes complained that the original markings can feel almost frantically fast in a few places.  On the other hand, with our current concern for "authenticity," some musicians argue that we must follow Beethoven's tempo indications precisely, wherever they lead, in order to hear the music the way he wanted us to hear it.  Even some performances that do not deal with any other aspect of historical performance have made much of the fact that they follow exactly the metronome markings that Beethoven put into his scores. 

In our data driven society, metronome markings may seem like an obvious, objective way of deciding a tempo, but putting metronome markings on music can be a tricky business for composers.  While we must study Beethoven's indications and take them seriously, there is more to consider than simply looking at a number.  It has frequently been pointed out, for example, that the tempo we hear in our heads tends to slow down a bit once we play the music on the piano, and that it will often slow down still further, when we perform the music with a large ensemble.  Composers often adjust the markings in their music as they try them out in performance.

It can take a good deal of experience to put an accurate metronome marking on a piece of music, and as the conductor and composer Pierre Boulez has pointed out, some composers are better at it than others.  While he felt that Stravinsky was usually precise with his markings, he said that he came to realize over the years that some of Schoenberg's metronome markings needed to be adapted—generally slowed down—to make the the music convincing.  I once asked the composer Elliott Carter, who was known for his extremely precise metronome markings (e. g. quarter=90.5) whether he expected performers to hit those exact tempi.  He shrugged and said that he just wanted performers to understand the character of a passage and how it related to other passages; once they understood that, they should just play and not worry about numbers.  In other words, as Beethoven put it, "One must feel the tempos."

Cherubini, Beethoven's contemporary, listed metronome markings in his C minor Requiem, but when he conducted the premiere, an audience member timed the movements and came up with timings that could not possibly be achieved with the composer's own metronome markings.  He was clearly conducting for the acoustics of the moment—in that case, those of a reverberant crypt—and following his instincts.  Tempo is, after all, no more important than a host of other elements in a performance.

The metronome was a new invention during Beethoven's lifetime, and, musical genius though he was, he had very little experience with it.  He did not see one until he was in his forties, and, by the time he added his metronome markings, his deafness was too advanced for him to have a chance to adjust the results  in actual practice.  It is, of course, important to study and take into account Beethoven's metronome markings—and indeed to follow them—but perhaps more as a guide than as an ironclad commandment.

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