[Uwe] Kliemt and his allies believe that musicians began playing faster at the dawn of the industrial era. As the world sped up, they sped up with it. In the early nineteenth century, the public fell in love with a new generation of virtuoso pianists, among them the supremely gifted Franz Liszt, who played with dazzling dexterity. For the virtuoso, cranking up the tempo was one way to flaunt his technical brilliance--and give the audience a thrill.

Advances in instrument technology may have also encouraged faster playing. In the nineteenth century, the piano came to the fore. It was more powerful and better suited to running notes together than were its predecessors, the harpsichord and the clavichord. In 1878, Brahms wrote that "on the piano . . . everything happens faster, much livelier, and lighter in tempo."

Mirroring the modern obsession with efficiency, musical teaching took on an industrial ethic. Students began practicing by playing notes, rather than compositions. A long-hours culture took hold. Modern piano students can spend six to eight hours a day . . . Chopin recommended no more than three.

In Kliemt's view, all of these trends helped to fuel the acceleration of classical music. "Think of the greatest composers in the pre-twentieth-century canon--Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Brahms," he says. "We play them all too fast."

Carl Honore, In Praise of Slowness, pp. 232-33