Help with tempo ...

[slane]

OK .. very basic question and I feel a bit dumb having to ask this.

I'm learning this Haydn Scherzo HobXVI/9 you can hear and see the music  here ..

But you have to jump to 5:26.

That's so cool!

I reckon I play it at about that speed. But its supposed to be Allegro and according to wikipedia allegro is 120BPM. But when I play against the metronome, I'm playing 120 quavers / minute. Not 120 crotchets, and I seriously doubt anyone could play it 2x as fast.
Its in 2/4 time.

So what am I missing? When is a beat not the crotchet?

[bleicher]

Allegro means fast, but what the actually means in terms of beats or crotchets per minute depends on how the music is written. I've always been puzzled by people trying to quantify exactly how many beats or crotchets per minute equals each speed indication. I'd assume the list you found does mean beats per minute rather than crotchets per minute, but other than that I'd ignore the list altogether and play the piece at a tempo which suits the mood of the music and the 'allegro' indication.

[lelle]

OK .. very basic question and I feel a bit dumb having to ask this.

I'm learning this Haydn Scherzo HobXVI/9 you can hear and see the music  here ..

But you have to jump to 5:26.

That's so cool!

I reckon I play it at about that speed. But its supposed to be Allegro and according to wikipedia allegro is 120BPM. But when I play against the metronome, I'm playing 120 quavers / minute. Not 120 crotchets, and I seriously doubt anyone could play it 2x as fast.
Its in 2/4 time.

So what am I missing? When is a beat not the crotchet?

The notion that different tempos correspond to different BPM's should be used as a rule of thumb rather than being viewed as an absolute fact. You noted yourself that nobody would play it that fast and you are correct. It would just sound ridicolous! Allegro just means "fast". But "fast" could be many tempos. Depends on what you compare "fast" to!

The beat is indicated by the time signature. If the time signature is 4/4 then the beat is on each crotchet (or quarter note as I prefer to say). But if the tempo is say 4/8, then the beat is on each eight note (quaver).

Usually when a score has a metronome marking it also states on what notes it should tick on in that tempo. In one piece that I play it says half note (minim in British...?) = 96 BPM, then it means that I'm supposed to play 96 half notes / minute.

So if there are no metronome indications you'll just have to choose a tempo you think suits tempo indications and the piece, and then you can set your metronome to tick on whatever beat you want, as long as it helps you keep the time. For example, I'll sometimes set my metronome to tick on each quaver, even if the time signature tells me the beat is on each crotchet, just because some passages are easier to practise this way

[slane]

Hmm .. so I am stupid, but not stupid in the way that I thought.

The music has 24 bars .. that's 48 beats and at 120 BPM should take (without repeats)
take 24secs. It takes me 26 secs to play it. So I'm actually playing at 120 .. but I can't hear myself playing that against the metronome. I think I'm playing 1 quaver per tock, when its actually a crotchet! Man!