What if tempo had been artificially accelerated to the point of completely distorting the intentions of classical composers? And what if that had served to rob us of what was once ours, making us pay to listen to virtuosos who play like machine guns? How would we feel about reversing all that now, at a time when the acceleration of life only brings us anxiety?

The tempo of musical performance increased significantly during the 19th century, to the point where it became inaccessible to amateur performers—the intended audience for much of the music composed at the time. This shift distorted the intentions of many composers. Recent research into the misinterpretation of metronome markings in 19th-century scores seems to support this, particularly the theory of the "double beat", which argues that composers meant to indicate a tempo twice as slow as what we currently consider correct.

Half as fast is a radical shift—it changes everything: not just the performance and the listener’s experience, but also our entire relationship with music. Music became the domain of professional virtuosos and those who commercialize art, marking the beginning of an industry removed from the domestic sphere, where audiences now participate only passively.

Of course, it wasn’t just music that sped up. Life itself has been accelerating progressively, to the point where today we live at a speed that most people find hard to endure.

Only a vampire, with their longevity, could have the perspective needed to tell us what really happened—how we ended up living in such a rush. Drawing from his extensive 19th-century art collection and his fortepiano from the same era, perhaps he could give us the keys to understand—and perhaps even reverse—this situation.

This performance is part of the second edition of the Guèisers program, curated by Marc Caellas, under the title En mig ("In the middle").