Musical questions and answers thread

[MrGongGong]

... so if the pianist and violinist play their respective B double flats simultaneously and then their A naturals simultaneously, will one of those combinations sound "wrong" to the listener ? and if so, which one ?

not an entirely hypothetical situation

All depends on the context of what was before

[teamsaint]

All depends on the context of what was before

and who is playing.

And if there is room for that kind of subtlety, i doubt very much if it exists in the higher registers of the violin, for example. It might exist in the mind of the performer, but whether it would be registered in any way by a listener is open to doubt, I think.

The performer's intention is important though....

[Flay]

My understanding is that the ti in "la ti do" can be slightly higher in pitch than the ti in "do ti la".

Is this correct?

[ahinton]

Indeed, but the composer's sense of humour might have more to do with that than any explicable notational reasoning.

Far be it from me to add any more flats to the already large block of studio and duplex ones above, but I cannot resist asking whether there's a missing one on the m.d. quaver F in the first of these four bars...

[Richard Barrett]

the composer's sense of humour might have more to do with that than any explicable notational reasoning.

That may well be, but does anyone know which piece I was actually talking about? (to clarify, the instances I mentioned were of a B double flat being followed immediately by an A sharp.) I'll put out a clue: this piece may or may not be extremely long.

[Flay]

That may well be, but does anyone know which piece I was actually talking about? (to clarify, the instances I mentioned were of a B double flat being followed immediately by an A sharp.) I'll put out a clue: this piece may or may not be extremely long.

The Appassionata has a lot of flats and quite a few double-flats so I went through the score on Petrucci but could not see an A sharp so I gave up.

From your clue perhaps it is in Opus Clavicem Balisticum? I am certainly not going to look through that score!

[hedgehog]

That may well be, but does anyone know which piece I was actually talking about? (to clarify, the instances I mentioned were of a B double flat being followed immediately by an A sharp.) I'll put out a clue: this piece may or may not be extremely long.

Satie: Vexations

[Flay]

Satie: Vexations

That's worse than Clav Bal:

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
To play this motive 840 times in succession, it would be right to prepare oneself previously,
and in the most dead silence, by earnest immobilities

[ahinton]

The Appassionata has a lot of flats and quite a few double-flats so I went through the score on Petrucci but could not see an A sharp so I gave up.

From your clue perhaps it is in Opus Clavicem Balisticum? I am certainly not going to look through that score!

The only good reason NOT to do so would be in the present context where (and because) it's obviously the wrong answer!

[Serial_Apologist]

Satie: Vexations

Bingo!!!

Buy that man a drink!

[hedgehog]

Bingo!!!

Buy that man a drink!

ahem. It's a girls' thing SA But I'm sure kea knew the answer, she just didn't want to spoil the fun.

Actually my first thought was Chopin, I recalled vaguely some scary moments in the Ballades, but looking at the scores showed rather tame stuff of C flats being followed by C sharps, albeit at a cracking tempo with lots of other notes besides.

Then RB's clue made it obvious.

[Serial_Apologist]

ahem. It's a girls' thing SA

I should have checked the kea signature...

Then RB's clue made it obvious.

Wwwwwwwwwwwell.............

[kea]

ahem. It's a girls' thing SA But I'm sure kea knew the answer, she just didn't want to spoil the fun.

Actually my first thought was Chopin, I recalled vaguely some scary moments in the Ballades, but looking at the scores showed rather tame stuff of C flats being followed by C sharps, albeit at a cracking tempo with lots of other notes besides.

Then RB's clue made it obvious.

RB referred to it as a well-known piece, so I knew it was Vexations, but (perhaps oddly) most of my other assumptions would have also been Satie, even though apart from that piece and the Sarabandes he did not actually use double accidentals that much. I might have possibly guessed Le fils des étoiles or Socrate but they are very normally notated by comparison, Socrate even has bar lines.

[Richard Barrett]

Satie: Vexations

Congratulations!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... so if the pianist and violinist play their respective B double flats simultaneously and then their A naturals simultaneously, will one of those combinations sound "wrong" to the listener ? and if so, which one ?

not an entirely hypothetical situation

It might do if the two notes were recorded, edited and played back out of context. But listeners in and at performance follow Musical lines and the brain "understands" (or, possibly "translates") what it's "meant" to hear in a piece of Music. (?Purely speculative this next bit, but this might be akin to how the brain processes visual information, "translating" two-dimensional line drawings into three-dimensional perspective?)