Sheep Grazing Safely

Seated in a Unitarian chapel, waiting for the start of a long-lived friend's funeral, I listen as the organist performs Johann Sebastian Bach's “Sheep May Safely Graze”. The music and words are from the Hunt Cantata which praises hunting as well as faithful shepherds watching their flocks. This is a slow piece, I think, but I'm afraid the sheep will fall asleep if the organist plays it any slooow-er. So muses an off-duty organist.

     The flow of music, what we call tempo, is subjective and individual, like the pace of pedestrians. I think of my friend, Lew, who bounces along like a youngster; it's hard to keep up with him.  Or those whose arthritic hobbles are painful to observe or the knock-kneed gaits suggesting days in a saddle. Watching pairs of folks walking arm-in-arm, you know one of them is adjusting to the other's tempo.

     Maybe this in-built variation in tempo influenced the development of the metronome*. How could a composer ensure the correct performance of her piece?  The history of time-beating inventions goes back at least to Galileo, who played with pendulums over four hundred years ago. A long list of inventors tinkered with his ideas.  Eventually, Dietrik Nikolaus Winkel added weights at either end of the pendulum's arc to keep it swinging at very slow tempos. But he gets little credit because the entrepreneur, Johann Nepenuk Maelzel, saw an opportunity.  In Paris in 1816 he copied the design and put it on the market as Maelzel's Metronome. Now most student musicians struggle to keep time with the swinging arm on mechanical metronomes.  Incidentally, those new-fangled digital metronomes can take a back seat, I say.

   
     You'll often see M.M. = (a number) at the top of choral or keyboard music. If M.M. = 60, it means you render one note every second. That's sixty notes every minute - very slow. Try singing “America the Beautiful” at this tempo, that is, one note of the melody every second.

     Now try two notes every second or M.M. = 120.  Swing your arm like a pendulum. Make it one second from left to right and one second from right to left. If you sing two notes of the melody for each swing, the tempo feels almost right though still a bit slow.

     Here's a quick assignment; don't worry - there's no test.  Click on each title below.  Listen just for a few measures and decide if you like the tempo of that performance.  Notice how the fast notes (remember "running notes" in elementary school?) in the melody sound.  Are they rushed?  Which selection invites you to listen all the way through?  Sheep 1, Sheep 2, Sheep 3, Sheep 4, and Sheep 5.  Each conductor has his/her unique idea of how fast those sheep should graze.  Which one did you choose?

     Back in church, the organist is approaching the end of “Sheep”. Thank goodness! Like braking for a stop signal, he's executing a ritardando, gradually coming to the final cadence. Time for the speaking part of the service.

    Enjoy your week. Set your tempo so you can enjoy this time on earth. And watch out for sheep, especially you folks who live in Canada or in wide open spaces.

    Talk to you next Thursday,  Donna

     *  I don't sell metronomes.  But this is a photo of the mechanical metronome I referenced.