BaL 22.02.14 - Haydn: Symphony no. 44

[rauschwerk]

I've no idea what pitch Pinnock was using, but most EM groups use A415 which is exactly a semitone down. So it's not 'in the cracks' exactly. Perhaps your daughter also has a subliminal dislike of unequal temperaments, which I'm sure Pinnock does use!

Pinnock's set is at A421. We are not told what temperament was used for the harpsichord, but my high frequency hearing acuity is not what it was and I can't hear it well enough to cause any irritation! With non-keyboard instruments the question of temperament simply doesn't apply.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

With non-keyboard instruments the question of temperament simply doesn't apply.

Oh yes it does. Apart from the orchestral strings and the trombone/sackbut family, temperament is an issue to a varying degree.

[LeMartinPecheur]

That's fascinating LeM-P. How did she develop it? Learning the violin or piano?

I'll have to cross-examine her but I'd assume it's something that she was born with, or at any rate its development preceded actual music lessons. She did learn the violin for a few years but her main enthusiasm at the moment is the guitar.

What made my wife twig was that, when Junior was playing a written set of chords for a pop song and hadn't twigged that the chords were in a different key to the recorded original, she simply set off singing in the original key with somewhat disastrous effect on the harmony She is pretty much incapable of singing a song (or hymn, carol etc) in a key different to the one she first heard it in. Hence my original reference to its being as much a curse as a blessing!

Not too much fun for Mr and Mrs LMP either. Neither of us has perfect pitch. My wife is a much better practical musician (singer, piano, guitar) than I am but neither of us now dares sing anything 'in the presence' without getting 'a' right note to start on, or 'the' right note if it's something Junior already knows

It may yet wear off: Gerald Moore reported he had it when young, and it was of course a very mixed blessing for him when accompanists are required to transpose on demand for singers! He therefore had to get used to playing the same song in many different keys, and eventually the ability to pitch any note accurately departed. Possibly in a huff?

PS Have now cross-examined Jnr: she says she wasn't aware of it till quite recently but that that doesn't mean it had suddenly developed. Have tried her on the Pinnock Trauer symphony - she says it makes her ears feel a bit funny but she can't tell me whether she wants the pitch bent any particular way. So maybe she is dimly aware of the tiny deviation from 'one semitone flat' that was pointed out above??

[pastoralguy]

Slightly off topic but I got a cd from a charity shop of the 43, 50, 58 & 59 symphonies played by Fran's Bruggen conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightment for £1.50. Superb bargain.

However, it's available from Zoverstocks for 4p!! (£1.26 p&p)

Unbelievable.

[ardcarp]

but I'd assume it's something that she was born with

Not quite sure how that works, Kingfisher, as A440 is something agreed on by mankind, not an eternal verity! OTOH, in a musical family, she could have picked it up in utero....

[LeMartinPecheur]

Not quite sure how that works, Kingfisher, as A440 is something agreed on by mankind, not an eternal verity! OTOH, in a musical family, she could have picked it up in utero....

Before birth she did respond quite strongly to some music, eg when my wife was singing in church and when a Russian choir visited it.

My wife reported favourable reaction to the VW Serenade to Music in the original Henry Wood recording, and various other of my CDs. Can't recall if any of them were below A440 though!

Go on, now tell me that the Wood isn't at A440...

[waldo]

Not quite sure how that works, Kingfisher, as A440 is something agreed on by mankind, not an eternal verity! OTOH, in a musical family, she could have picked it up in utero....

That's true. But studies show that perfect pitch does appear to have a genetic or innate aspect. Obviously, there is an empirical aspect: one must be exposed to sound and learn through experience that this note is called C and that one D and so on. But that doesn't mean you can boil the whole facility down to a learned experience.

In any case, perfect pitch is much more than the mere ability to identify (and produce) a pitch independently of a referential context. That is only what it looks like to an outsider. Most people with PP have a very different kind of experience when they hear sounds to those without PP. It isn't just a case of "knowing" that this note is C: they hear the C-ness of the note - much as we see the "blueness" of a blue object. Each and every note has its own unique character, its own "flavour". It is something that is almost completely incomprehensible to those without the ability; it is a radically different order of experience. In addition, they usually have the same kind of experience with harmonies and chords: they hear the "A-flat-majorness" of an A flat chord.

If anyone wants to know more, you can read about the phenomenon in Oliver Sack's Musicophilia.......

[ardcarp]

I'm rapidly getting out of my depth here, but logic suggests that 'C' is only a 'C' because someone decided to call it 'C', and that C=523.3Hz because someone (or a committee) decided it should be. And to suggest anyone can inherit the C-ness of a 'C' is to subscribe to the discredited Lamarckian theory that learned experiences can be passed on to offspring genetically.

I accept that someone may acquire genetically the ability to 'learn' pitch (i.e. to acquire 'perfect pitch') but it must involve living and working with an instrument tuned consistently to an agreed pitch...usually A440.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm rapidly getting out of my depth here, but logic suggests that 'C' is only a 'C' because someone decided to call it 'C', and that C=523.3Hz because someone (or a committee) decided it should be. And to suggest anyone can inherit the C-ness of a 'C' is to subscribe to the discredited Lamarckian theory that learned experiences can be passed on to offspring genetically.

I accept that someone may acquire genetically the ability to 'learn' pitch (i.e. to acquire 'perfect pitch') but it must involve living and working with an instrument tuned consistently to an agreed pitch...usually A440.

This is how I understood it, too.

[waldo]

I'm rapidly getting out of my depth here, but logic suggests that 'C' is only a 'C' because someone decided to call it 'C', and that C=523.3Hz because someone (or a committee) decided it should be. And to suggest anyone can inherit the C-ness of a 'C' is to subscribe to the discredited Lamarckian theory that learned experiences can be passed on to offspring genetically.

I accept that someone may acquire genetically the ability to 'learn' pitch (i.e. to acquire 'perfect pitch') but it must involve living and working with an instrument tuned consistently to an agreed pitch...usually A440.

You are quite right. "C" is an arbitrary convention. It is a part of a publically agreed framework for describing and talking about pitch. Just as, for example, "blue" is part of a publically agreed framework for talking about colours.

I am not suggesting for one minute that anyone can be born with knowledge of this framework. That would be absurd. The public framework is something that must be learned. All our linguistic/conceptual frameworks have to be learned, for that matter.

What is innate, or may have an innate aspect, is the capacity to recognise a pitch independently of a referential standard. When someone plays "D sharp", you can immediately recognise it as such. It is the capacity which is innate; not the arbitrary conventions which govern the use of the phrase "D sharp."

I mentioned earlier than people with PP have an extra dimension of experience: they can "hear" the C-ness of C. Obviously, such people must be exposed to experiences of C in order to describe it as such. But the experience itself - the peculiar layer of experience I am referring to and which is widely attested to in interviews and experiments - is something that only those with PP have. They aren't born with an in-built knowledge of middle C as defined in today's culture, but they are born with an in-built ability to experience this pitch - and all others - in a way that seems to be much richer and far more complex than it is for those without PP..

[Tony Halstead]

At the age of 10 I had been learning the piano for 2 years ( weekly lessons with the old lady 'down the road') and had been practising on our battered old upright.

One morning during our daily school 'assembly' before lessons, the school 'music master' who habitually played the hymns and songs was taken ill, and the headmaster asked if there was anyone present who could 'play the piano'.
I volunteered, and in the absence of any printed music, hymn-book or such, I played - from memory - the piano accompaniments to e.g. 'the old hundredth'; 'onward, christian soldiers' and 'we plough the fields' etc. ( it was harvest time). Of course I had heard these many times and not only knew the tunes but also the ( very simple) harmonies.

When the school music master returned to school after his illness he asked me to play those pieces to him as I had done in 'morning assembly' the week previous.
It turned out that I had played the tunes a semitone higher than necessary, for the simple reason that our home piano was very flat - a semitone flat - ( A=415) so I had memorised the tunes and harmonies that I had heard at school ( where the piano was in tune at A=440) a semitone too high.
What this seems to indicate is that - at least in my case - 'absolute' or 'perfect' pitch is probably an enhanced memory rather than a genetic inborn 'faculty'.

12 years later I 'lost' my absolute pitch in a car accident where I hit my head on the windscreen and after a few weeks suffering from concussion found that my pitch-sense had ( temporarily) risen by a semitone but finally settled back to normal after about 5 weeks.
Fortunately I now have a sort of 'floating' absolute pitch that I can rely on after about an hour of playing/ rehearsing at the 'new' pitch.

Playing the natural/ valveless horn in concerts or recordings with many and various orchestras or ensembles, I have had to adjust to the following over many years: A 415 ( for german or english baroque music); A 430 as a sort of generalised 'classical' pitch for Haydn, Mozart, early Beethoven; A 438 for late Beethoven; A 421 for 'early Haydn' ( Pinnock where the stated reason for this was the oboe players were not able to find surviving instruments that would play at A 430) : A 392 for e.g. Rameau.
The most 'miserable' and uncomfortable time I have ever had, pitch-wise, was playing at A 421 in the English Concert/ Pinnock Haydn recording project where the pitch was so very close to 'baroque' A 415 that it just felt like we were 'playing sharp' at baroque pitch!

[waldo]

What this seems to indicate is that - at least in my case - 'absolute' or 'perfect' pitch is probably an enhanced memory rather than a genetic inborn 'faculty'.

No, it doesn't. You are conflating the "application" or "content" of your rare ability with the ability itself. Obviously, if you take someone with perfect pitch and tell them C is D, or train them on a piano which is half a tone out, that person will have to make some adjustments when they perform in public. They have to bring their "language" into into line with the wider public standard. It is just the same with colours. You could bring up a child and tell them that blue objects were "red". When they went to school, their language would then be out of syc with everyone else's.

But! - but this does not, in any way, imply that the ability to identify colours does not have a significant innate or inborn aspect. It does. Without eyes or the right cognitive abilities or a functioning retina, you couldn't do it. It is just the same with perfect pitch. We are talking about the faculty, and not its application in this or that context. No-one is suggesting that you have an innate knowledge of middle C, but only that you have an innate ability to recognise it in a way others don't.

Another way of thinking about it is this: no-one who didn't already have PP could ever have acquired your ability from experience. If it was simply a case of enhanced memory, the question the becomes: why doesn't this kind of thing happen to other people? Answer: because you have an ability they don't. Just how much of that ability is a result of upbringing and a result of innate stuff is hard to say. No-one really knows. There is evidence (from Chinese music schools) that you can, in fact, improve someone's chances of getting perfect pitch if you train them when they are very young. But we are still only dealing with a small minority.

I read somewhere - probably apocryphal - that Leonard Bernstein locked himself in a room for a whole month in an effort to "learn" middle C. He couldn't do it. And he couldn't do it because he didn't have the innate ability in the first place.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I'm glad you recovered from you accident, Tony. Perfect/absolute pitch must be a curse as well as a huge advantage.

To make matters even more complicated, mathematicians/physicists don't start from A440, but C256, as it makes it easier for calculations - or at least it did before the days of calculators.

In my very humble opinion, the only people who gain from this pitch minefield are instrument manufacturers who are able to fleece underpaid musicians by selling them yet more instruments. As an oboist, I know the pressure of splashing out on that plus a cor anglais, with the added temptation of an oboe d'amore. No way would I buy a baroque oboe at A415, just to satisfy a few OCD scholars who tell me it's "correct"

[ardcarp]

Thanks, Tony, for that fascinating post (#131). Interesting that your 'learned pitch memory' was affected by a head injury. Apparently certain drugs given for epilepsy can affect 'pitch memory' too, though the effect is reversible when the drugs are stopped or changed. Funny old thing the brain.

Incidentally I too, along with a couple of other lads, used to cover up for the music master (who was habitually late) at assembly. As this was on the organ, the headmaster couldn't see who was playing. We used to show off (to each other) by putting the hymns in different keys from which they were written. And if you could get the whole school...and especially the staff....screeching up to a top G it was considered fine sport.

[verismissimo]

Thanks, Tony, for that fascinating post (#131)...

Yes, really wonderful, thanks, Tony!