D minor

[MrGongGong]

I have absolute pitch

How far away from a given frequency do you have to go to stop hearing a pitch as the same note?

For example
Do you hear 442HZ as "A"
Do you also hear 436HZ as "A"

and what happens when you listen to music that doesn't use a tempered scale?
Does it sound "out of tune"

(and lots of other questions about how you might have acquired this)

[kea]

I guess that to some extent, it depends whether or not the listener has absolute/perfect pitch (it often seems to be the case that people with this facility also have extramusical associations with particular keys.)

Synaesthesia seems to go hand in hand with absolute pitch - but usually if it's a colour/sound association, it differs from person to person.

Basically. I know that for me (for example) D minor is a dark blue colour, almost violet, with a very watercolour-y texture (like... somewhat transparent, blurry at the edges but always drawing the eye with its unusual intensity of colour, etc,) but literally no other person ever would agree with that so I've stopped trying to look for logic behind it.

I've often wondered if it's possible to get the full impact of it without either absolute pitch, or a copy of the score (and the ability to follow it.)

With Nielsen? He generally makes it pretty clear that he's selecting a different key through the structure (for example the end of the Fifth Symphony is preceded by a long passage where the music is clearly preparing to move to a different key, only for us to realise right at the end that we've actually been in that key for a while), and also I think listeners can sort of tell by listening to where the music sits in an instrument's range (for example the finale of the Espansiva starts with the violins playing mainly on their D strings, whereas when the theme returns a fourth lower at the end to clinch the final modulation to A major they're on the G strings which have a richer and fuller timbre).

For example
Do you hear 442HZ as "A"
Do you also hear 436HZ as "A"

I can't speak for ahinton but to me 442hz sounds like an out-of-tune A, as does 436hz. By the time you get down to 432hz or so we're in the vicinity of A-quarter-flat which can go either way and thus is more like its own sound.

In modern performance practice several pieces that were probably integral to my mental formation of 'D minor' (eg Bach's BWV 1052 or 'Komm, süsses Kreuz') are actually in C-sharp minor (often slightly flat or sharp) which is a very different key, and not always one that suits the music better in my view.

[ahinton]

How far away from a given frequency do you have to go to stop hearing a pitch as the same note?

For example
Do you hear 442HZ as "A"
Do you also hear 436HZ as "A"

and what happens when you listen to music that doesn't use a tempered scale?
Does it sound "out of tune"

(and lots of other questions about how you might have acquired this)

To answer these in order...

It's the absolute in the term absolute pitch that's misleading, which is why I don't care for it and would rather have used something else but wasn't sure with what to substitute it; like tonality, it's a matter of degree rather than a question of having it or not having it.

I don't know the answer to your first question.

No, music that doesn't use a tempered scale doesn't sound "out of tune" to me; it simply sounds different to that which does.

I don't know how I acquired it, such as it is, but I do know that I've made no particular effort to do so and seemed to have it, such as it is, from the outset of my musical studies; whether it was enhanced as a consequence of starting off by studying (under the guidance of a Webern pupil) mainly the music of the Darmstadt-oriented postwar avant garde before ever hearing any Brahms, Beethoven of Mozart I cannot say with any certainty.

[MrGongGong]

I can't speak for ahinton but to me 442hz sounds like an out-of-tune A, as does 436hz. By the time you get down to 432hz or so we're in the vicinity of A-quarter-flat which can go either way and thus is more like its own sound.

You probably need to go for recalibration then

What happens when you listen to music that doesn't use equal temperament?
and
how do you know that your "A" is 440Hz based (even though a "note" and a "frequency" are different)

[Bryn]

To answer these in order...

It's the absolute in the term absolute pitch that's misleading, which is why I don't care for it and would rather have used something else but wasn't sure with what to substitute it; like tonality, it's a matter of degree rather than a question of having it or not having it.

I don't know the answer to your first question.

No, music that doesn't use a tempered scale doesn't sound "out of tune" to me; it simply sounds different to that which does.

I don't know how I acquired it, such as it is, but I do know that I've made no particular effort to do so and seemed to have it, such as it is, from the outset of my musical studies; whether it was enhanced as a consequence of starting off by studying (under the guidance of a Webern pupil) mainly the music of the Darmstadt-oriented postwar avant garde before ever hearing any Brahms, Beethoven of Mozart I cannot say with any certainty.

A Searley response indeed. [Already fetched me coat].

[ahinton]

A Searley response indeed. [Already fetched me coat].

Then put it back on the peg, then, because said teacher was not him; I didn't study with him until several years later!

[kea]

You probably need to go for recalibration then

What happens when you listen to music that doesn't use equal temperament?
and
how do you know that your "A" is 440Hz based (even though a "note" and a "frequency" are different)

I actually love the sound of music that's not equal tempered—both the initial strangeness of all these 'out-of-tune' sounds and the way it eventually acquires its own logic. I imagine 'absolute pitch' is linked to the prevailing temperament system of one's day—after listening to The Well-Tuned Piano in its entirety it can take a bit of time for equal temperament to sound right again, and one's concept of pitch could be adjusted to accommodate any tuning system, though scales with more than 12 notes might prove challenging! It would be a really cool experiment though.

As for A440 I suppose I don't really know—I've just sometimes heard a recording and thought it sounded off, and it turned out they had tuned to A444 or whatever. I think A440 is just what I'm most used to, ears will eventually adjust to different As so long as they retain their 'A-ness' which is a fuzzy subjective zone of several hz in either direction. It seems like there is a quality of 'being an A' (or a B-flat or a C or whatever) that my brain looks out for and applies to any pitch within a specific range. But this can be manipulated slightly so I've gotten used to A426 as 'A-quarter-flat' when before it would grate on me, and A415 just gets reimagined as A-flat/G-sharp and so on.

The colour associations go with, which makes a meditative Louis Couperin prelude written in C major sound quite well on a harpsichord tuned to A400 (a slightly flat B major, dark brown like grainy wood, slightly warm to the touch—given additional character by whatever unequal temperament the harpsichordist is using) but bizarre on the rare occasions a harpsichord is tuned to A440 (C major, hard dull yellow, ranging from watery to blocky).

[MrGongGong]

That's really interesting, thanks Kea
and so unlike a music academic I was taught by who insisted that his "perfect" pitch made anything outside ET "painful" to listen to.

What constitutes a given note (as in calling it "A") will always be a bit "fuzzy" anyway i've read some really interesting things in music psychology about how this moves about etc.

One of the things I love about La Monte Young is that listening to his music does "recalibrate" the relationship between the ear and brain.

[Bryn]

I actually love the sound of music that's not equal tempered—both the initial strangeness of all these 'out-of-tune' sounds and the way it eventually acquires its own logic. I imagine 'absolute pitch' is linked to the prevailing temperament system of one's day—after listening to The Well-Tuned Piano in its entirety it can take a bit of time for equal temperament to sound right again, and one's concept of pitch could be adjusted to accommodate any tuning system, though scales with more than 12 notes might prove challenging! It would be a really cool experiment though.

May I recommend Warren Burt's 39 Dissonant Studies?

I first bumped into Warren at the Intermodulation/Soft Machine Prom in 1970. Interesting chap.

[ahinton]

That's really interesting, thanks Kea
and so unlike a music academic I was taught by who insisted that his "perfect" pitch made anything outside ET "painful" to listen to.

What constitutes a given note (as in calling it "A") will always be a bit "fuzzy" anyway i've read some really interesting things in music psychology about how this moves about etc.

One of the things I love about La Monte Young is that listening to his music does "recalibrate" the relationship between the ear and brain.

Mindful of American critic Kyle Gann's claim for it as one of the greatest piano works from the latter half of the last century (which I find hard to perceive as other than rash at best), the main problem that I have with The Well-tuned Piano is that the tuning itself seems to be its principal substance and that this is the way in which is appears generally to be perceived, rather than its actual content as one might expect of a piece that's attracted so glowing a critical accolade.

Yes, it's a big work in terms of duration, but then so are certain Feldman works in which such duration might seem to some to be somewhat at odds with the amount of musical activity involved, but this could be taken as undermining it (not that I'm necessarily suggesting that it does so). I would be inclined to expect and hope for something rather more from a large-scale work whose performance is intended to occupy an entire programme than the mere recalibration of the relationship between ear and brain, even assuming that listening to it in its entirety actually has that effect upon audiences as a whole.

The apparent wilful absence of expectation of deep concentration on the part of composer, performers and listeners alike is probably one of the reasons why Elliott Carter deplored so much music of the kind produced by Young, Feldman and the minimalists. OK, Carter's own largest works, the first string quartet and the much later Sinfonia and What Next?, each occupy less than 50 minutes in performance and some might argue that such levels of sustained concentration might seem an unreasonable and/or unrealistic expectation in works of the dimensions of The Well-tuned Piano, but then what of the last five of Sorabji's piano symphonies in that context? (I single out these because they, too, were written during the latter half of the last century); nos. 2 & 3 have not yet been performed, but when I attended performances of nos. 4, 5 & 6 there seemed to be no palpable evidence of a problem with this among listeners - very much the opposite, indeed. Although from the first half of the last century, the middle (second) movement of Sorabji's Organ Symphony No. 2 is alone about as long as the composer's entire Opus Clavicembalisticum - and it's followed by a finale comprising a prelude, adagio, toccata and triple fugue which itself plays for around three more hours - but, again, I noticed no ennui setting in among the listeners at the première on 2010.

Obviously, the level of melodic, harmonic and contrapuntal activity - not to say transcendental virtuosity - in these works is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the works of Young, Feldman et al. With all of this in mind, I cannot help but think that a piece of the size of The Well-tuned Piano would likely well outstay its welcome were it not for the abiding fascination provided by temperament to which most of its listeners would previously have been unaccustomed; that's not intended as a personal value-judgement even if it might sound like one.

All that said, I admit that I have departed some distance from the topic of D minor!

[MrGongGong]

All that said, I admit that I have departed some distance from the topic of D minor!

And i'm very glad that you have.
It was only meant as a joke at the start BUT there are some really interesting things here.

[ahinton]

And i'm very glad that you have.
It was only meant as a joke at the start BUT there are some really interesting things here.

...from which one might conclude that there's many an interesting word inspired by jest!