Musings about the metronome.(Stravinsky interlude)

About two weeks ago I was practicing some orchestra music, and one passage was proving to be rather difficult. Not so much in terms of pitches but, rather the rhythm. So i pulled out my handy dandy "solo metronome". A lovely shade of blue and about the size of your hand. Most importantly it was 15 bucks. It was one of those days. You know, the ones where nothing was going right. I woke up later than usual. I had two tests, rehearsals, and feeling a bit overwhelmed. You can see where this is going. My state of mind was not one in which I should have been practicing. It was almost likened to Edgar A. Poe's tell tale heart, I could not get the darn rhythm and the metronome was mocking me with its perfect subdivisions of time. So I put it out of its misery. or myself out of my misery. CRASH!!! Now it won't turn on. So I've been faced with practicing with no metronome or the one on my computer which is very inconvenient. But in away, it has been a blessing. It has made me think of what people did before the metronome. I mean, it wasn't like the metronome was invented then suddenly musicians were created. Naturally they used musical intuition . It seems to me, that modern musicians, more likely the college age, have grown too dependent on the metronome. Don't get me wrong metronomes are great, but one can't perform a Bach cello suite with a metronome tempo. Its a great practice tool. yes it was stupid of me to knock it into submission, but musicians need to take a more musical approach to practice.