PULSE AND lUlYTIIM. 427 



to paint the pulse with notes than to paint the sound of music with 

 those same notes; to paint numbers with figures, and finally to paint 

 words with letters.' In this way the good doctor confounds throughout 

 the treatise the idea that music notes and measures could make a very 

 good sign-board on which to denote exactly where a morbid pulse 

 fails of being normal, and his discovery that a minute of his time was 

 usually placed at the same rhythmic rate per minute as accompanies 

 a normal pulse, which pulse, for want of a better chronometer than 

 the long hand of a clock, he places at one beat per second. 



This little work, imperfect as it is, and in spite of all its limita- 

 tions, renders clear, tangible and visible the failure, already men- 

 tioned, made by those who thus far have occupied themselves with the 

 question, to give consideration to the statistics furnished by musical 

 compositions through their metronomic denotations. Even the ear 

 aided by the metronome and the pulse recorded by the sphygmograph 

 need to prove the influence of the latter on the former, the unconscious 

 record made in musical composition of the recolleotion by the mind 

 from an indefinite number of beats per second of a certain stated num- 

 ber, which repeats itself in one form of union after another by different 

 composers at different periods and in different lands. 



The material from which statistics can be drawn is so unlimited 

 that, for want of space, two examples only will be considered, the 

 first dealing with the metronomic markings of the Beethoven Sonatas 

 and the second with popular music. 



Out of forty-three metronomic markings, taken straight through 

 from the beginning of the first volume of the Beethoven Sonatas — the 

 four standard editions as a working basis — nineteen are set to a rhythm 

 of seventy-two and seventy-six beats to a minute, a rate exactly that of 

 the average normal, healthy, adult human pulse; a pulse given by the 

 best authorities as lying between seventy and seventy-five pulsations 

 in the same time. According to fuller statistics, the physical pulse, 

 varied by the time of day and the effect of meals, ranges from a little 

 below sixty to a little over eighty. Within this limit all the rhythmic 

 markings of these sonatas lie. Three standing at fifty-six and fifty- 

 eight beats per minute, contrary to expectation, belonging to fast move- 

 ments undoubtedly marked slower on account of the difficulty the 

 fingers would experience in performing the notes as fast as the imagi- 

 nation would direct. The average of the entire one hundred and forty- 

 seven markings given by the four editors. Von Biilow, Steingraber, 

 Kohler and Germer, was sixty-four and four tenths rhythmic beats per 

 minute. The one sonata marked by Beethoven himself bearing the 

 figures 69, 80, 92, 76, 72 for the different movements. Allegro, Vivace, 

 Adagio, Largo, Allegro risoluto. 



