Musical questions and answers thread

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

In the early years of violin playing, F natural = F sharp and B flat = B natural - always. Never mind all these imagined enharmonic subtleties.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Maybe we should take a look at note values. As we all know:

2 minims = 1 semibreve

2 semibreves = 1 breve

…but it doesn't end there

2 or 3 breves = 1 long

2 or 3 longs = 1 large

For longs and larges, it all depends on context.

[MrGongGong]

Maybe we should take a look at note values. As we all know:

2 minims = 1 semibreve

2 semibreves = 1 breve

…but it doesn't end there

2 or 3 breves = 1 long

2 or 3 longs = 1 large

For longs and larges, it all depends on context.

Which, of course, has nothing to do with how fast they are in absolute terms
I love explaining why we have transposing instruments to teenagers particularly guitarists.
And I love the way that Homer Simpson's barbershop quartet was called the B Sharps

[amateur51]

Thus speaks our Bible black man of Wales! (and even the pitch is black, too)...

Saw the Andrew Sinclair film of Under Milk Wood yesterday - shorter than I'd remembered it, and none the worse for that

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

So a B double flat and an A natural would sound the same on say, a Piano,but not as a sung note,or maybe on a violin ??

Yes - on a piano, you just push down one of the middle black keys in one of the group of three and you get the same sound, and you call it G# or Ab. But a decent violinist (for example) will move his/her fingers to a slightly different position on the string for G# from the one they'd use for Ab. Similarly for A natural and B double flat, F natural and E# and all other "enharmonic" pairs of pitches.

And what about this beast

I can quite happily say that I have never encountered treble sharps or flats in any real piece of Music I've ever seen. I know that they exist theoretically (somewhere in the parallel universe on the other side of the Pythagorean Comma) but not (in my experience) in practice.

Me learning to play the Piano one day seems a million miles away since I started reading up on this kind of stuff.

Which is why you shouldn't "do" Theory before practice: Musicians didn't come up with the Theory and then make the sounds apply to that Theory - the Music (and Music-making) comes first always; the Theory "explains" it in words and symbols. Start with easy Piano pieces and learn the Music, the Instrumental technique and the Theory as you go along.

[MrGongGong]

Which is why you shouldn't "do" Theory before practice: Musicians didn't come up with the Theory and then make the sounds apply to that Theory - the Music (and Music-making) comes first always; the Theory "explains" it in words and symbols. Start with easy Piano pieces and learn the Music, the Instrumental technique and the Theory as you go along.

I seem to remember reading something (I think it was in a music psychology textbook) about how music learning and language learning were different because people usually learn to read and write a language that they can speak, whereas with music the reading and writing often takes place at the same time as learning to 'speak'. (but I don't think music is a language)

[Richard Barrett]

I don't think music is a language

Quite. But on the other hand notation is a language, in the sense of consisting of symbols whose meaning is at any given point in history more or less agreed (always leaving room for poetry of course).

By the way, there's one (quite well-known) piano piece I can think of which contains several instances of a B double flat being followed by an A sharp. Does anyone know what it might be?

[Alison]

Quite. But on the other hand notation is a language, in the sense of consisting of symbols whose meaning is at any given point in history more or less agreed (always leaving room for poetry of course).

By the way, there's one (quite well-known) piano piece I can think of which contains several instances of a B double flat being followed by an A sharp. Does anyone know what it might be?

At last, the whole forum community is stumped!

[Serial_Apologist]

At last, the whole forum community is stumped!

I'm willing to bet it's one of those Messiaen Preludes. Or maybe a piece of late Scriabin?

[Alison]

I'm willing to bet it's one of those Messiaen Preludes. Or maybe a piece of late Scriabin?

I was going to lob in Vingt Regards.

[Alain Maréchal]

A question. Is the innkeeper "Lillas Pastia" (Carmen) a man or a woman? I have always thought of him as a man - but in the current production at Covent Garden she is a woman. Have I been wrong all this time? Or is the character's sex undefined? Any light shed on this would be welcome!

Libretto:

"chez mon ami Lillas Pastia" *
"que nous veut-il encore, maitre Pastia?" **

ergo, male.

* when heard, it would not be obvious
** my copy has the recitatives, so it may be spurious, but I assume the gender would not have changed in the transition.

(I haven't heard a performance for years - what is commoner these days, recit. or dialogue?)

[kea]

By the way, there's one (quite well-known) piano piece I can think of which contains several instances of a B double flat being followed by an A sharp. Does anyone know what it might be?

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



Pianists love this guy.

[mercia]

Yes - on a piano, you just push down one of the middle black keys in one of the group of three and you get the same sound, and you call it G# or Ab. But a decent violinist (for example) will move his/her fingers to a slightly different position on the string for G# from the one they'd use for Ab. Similarly for A natural and B double flat, F natural and E# and all other "enharmonic" pairs of pitches.

... 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

[Flay]

Poor Ammy et al. Wiki explains it all quite simply:


Tuning enharmonics[edit]

In principle, the modern musical use of the word enharmonic to mean identical tones is correct only in equal temperament, where the octave is divided into 12 equal semitones; but even in other tuning systems enharmonic associations can be perceived by listeners and exploited by composers.^[4] This is in contrast to the ancient use of the word in the context of unequal temperaments, such as quarter-comma meantone intonation, in which enharmonic notes differ slightly in pitch. It should be noted, however, that enharmonic equivalents occur in any equal temperament system, such as 19 equal temperament or 31 equal temperament, if it can be and is used as a meantone temperament. The specific equivalences define the equal temperament. 19 equal is characterized by E♯ = F♭ and 31 equal by D = F, for instance; in these tunings it is not true that E♯ = F♮, which is characteristic only of 12 equal temperament.^{[original research?]}

Pythagorean[edit]

Main article: Pythagorean tuning
In Pythagorean tuning, all pitches are generated from a series of justly tuned perfect fifths, each with a ratio of 3 to 2. If the first note in the series is an A♭, the thirteenth note in the series, G♯, will be higher than the seventh octave (octave = ratio of 1 to 2, seven octaves is 1 to 2⁷ = 128) of the A♭ by a small interval called a Pythagorean comma. This interval is expressed mathematically as:



Meantone[edit]

Main article: Meantone temperament

In 1/4 comma meantone, on the other hand, consider G♯ and A♭. Call middle C's frequency . Then high C has a frequency of . The 1/4 comma meantone has just (i.e., perfectly tuned) major thirds, which means major thirds with a frequency ratio of exactly 4 to 5.

In order to form a just major third with the C above it, A♭ and high C need to be in the ratio 4 to 5, so A♭ needs to have the frequency



In order to form a just major third above E, however, G♯ needs to form the ratio 5 to 4 with E, which, in turn, needs to form the ratio 5 to 4 with C. Thus the frequency of G♯ is



Thus, G♯ and A♭ are not the same note; G♯ is, in fact 41 cents lower in pitch (41% of a semitone, not quite a quarter of a tone). The difference is the interval called the enharmonic diesis, or a frequency ratio of.

On a piano tuned in equal temperament, both G♯ and A♭ are played by striking the same key, so both have a frequency . Such small differences in pitch can escape notice when presented as melodic intervals. However, when they are sounded as chords, the difference between meantone intonation and equal-tempered intonation can be quite noticeable, even to untrained ears.

The reason that — despite the fact that in recent Western music, A♭ is exactly the same pitch as G♯ — we label them differently is that in tonal music notes are named for their harmonic function, and retain the names they had in the meantone tuning era.^{[citation needed]} This is called diatonic functionality. One can however label enharmonically equivalent pitches with one and only one name, sometimes called integer notation, often used in serialism and musical set theory and employed by the MIDI interface.


What's the problem?

[Flay]

Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier No. 8 has the Prelude in E-flat minor and the fugue in D-sharp minor