What Exactly is "in Tune?"

A very interesting exchange is currently raging on the Music Theory Society's talk line about overtones and tunings.  I know what I know about overtones simply from experience with them.

• The piano:  I know that the piano overtones are extremely chaotic and that this chaos can be troubling in the extreme, or marvelous, depending....
• Unaccompanied voices:  Nothing is more thrilling to me than to be part of an a cappella ensemble; the instinctual tuning of perfect intervals is nothing short of mysterious. (By the way, I find amateurs to be more readily receptive to that level of tuning than most trained professionals.)
• Mean-tone: or whatever you could call the improvised method of tuning the harpsichord with which I experimented for many years before being blessed with the ability to concentrate all my musical strength on solo piano playing - my life's dream.  At the point where the solo piano work resumed I was no longer able to hear the other, relatively purer keyboard intervals, though the vocal tuning never wavered, interestingly enough.
• Just intonation:  the kind of very pure within-the-harmonic-series intonation with which some string quartets, notably the Del Sol Quartet, are now experimenting thanks to composers like Robert Johnston--the first time I heard one of these works I practically levitated to the ceiling, it was that thrilling.  This is what quartets are supposed to sound like!  This is what Mozart's quartets are supposed to sound like!

The joke is that I used to sing a cappella regularly with a group of mostly graduate students in Music Theory and or Composition who simply could not look at a printed score without hearing piano pitch.
They could do the warm-up exercise that will produce perfectly in-tune unisons and major thirds; they couldn't read and hear at the same time.

Curious.

Talk About Pitch Specificity!

Yesterday's rehearsal of the Brahms Horn Trio was a revelation in listening.  Violinist Gregor Kitzis spotted a note in the horn that was crying out for special treatment.  How did he notice it?

I can't presume to get inside of his brain, but I think it's because he was spending the entire rehearsal experimenting with violin techniques that would enable him to better match the horn's timbres on specific pitches, with amazing results.  But here was a problem that demanded special attention:  The horn, playing dotted half notes, one to a bar, moves down a half step.  It happens twice in the movement, each time with spectacular consequences if appropriately listened to and accounted for.

Seemed like nothing at all, until we did it.  We -- and the music -- will never be the same.

Is It Phenomenology?

Imagining that a work of art exists only in the eye of the beholder/listener/reader is an excellent clue to the way I approach performance.  If I can make your hearing come alive the performance is successful, indeed, the work is successful.

I long ago came to the conclusion that the purpose of all art is to make contact between human beings, alive or no longer bodily alive.

If I recognize in any single sound written however many centuries ago a sound that literally "turns me on" then I know I am not alone in the universe.  This was actually what happened to me as a young child when certain sounds in Mozart's piano music spoke to me as if he were there alongside me in the room.

I knew absolutely nothing about Mozart except that he had lived some 200 years earlier.  I had never heard a note of his either on the radio or on recordings -- such things hardly existed in private homes when I was a child.  The radio that did exist was never tuned to a station that played classical music, if there even was such a thing in Chicago in the 1940's.

I stand firmly by this statement about the purpose of the masterworks.  It figures centrally in the presentation I will be making in Korea exactly one week from today.  Wish me luck.

Music To Save One's Soul

A beautiful article about the recently deceased author Timothy Berger quoted him as saying that if he wrote it was to save his own soul and that essentially that was nobody's business but his own.

He couldn't have put more succinctly what distinguishes the real thing from the over-glorified idols created by commercialization.  You do it for yourself; if is life, health, joy, even identity that is at stake.  Everything else is distraction.

Modeling Music

Theorists everywhere seem to be fascinated with the problem of modeling music.  This is not what I do, except insofar as music is a deeply personal, subjective experience and, as such, wondrously difficult to share except in the act of making it happen together with others - like singing hymns, or listening together as some extraordinary music is unfolding -  good jazz in an intimate club setting, for example.

By giving visual form to subjective aspects of listening, Tonal Refraction invites dialogue between two people looking at the same subjectively-generated visual object.  This, in turn, may lead to an otherwise unreachable level of communication about the deeply private act of hearing.  At any rate, dialogue or no, it opens the possibility that one is not alone with what one hears, the way one hears it.

The model too often becomes a substitute for paying real attention.  As I have pointed out before there is an element of disbelief in every moment of true listening:  Did I really hear that?  I have a whole theory of the repeat sign:  It exists so that you, the player, must be sure that the listener is always hearing something for the first time, therefore, the "repeat" sign actually means the opposite of "Repeat!"  It means:  "Whatever you do, do not play these notes the way you did the first time!"

Truly Difficult

Yesterday I heard two quite different versions of piano playing, polar opposites, one of the other.

First I heard a radically developmentally challenged, blind young man struggle to get a tune in one hand while playing off-beat chords in the other.  He so much wanted to do it:  he had tried many times in previous lessons without success.  Now he was clearly determined to get it right, so determined that he was willing to play wrong notes in order to master the off-beat impulse, which is difficult for anyone but supremely difficult for someone with his learning disabilities.

It was moving in the extreme to watch him try.  Once, twice, three times.  Then he got it.  Not only is the physical coordination demanding, but so is the amount of time required to pursue such an elusive goal.

I was deeply moved, as was he, and as was his sister, who was observing the lesson.

Later in the day I heard by chance a recording of a fine virtuoso pianist playing the Fountains of the Villa d'Este from Liszt's LesAnnees de Pelerinage.  Sorry, it left me cold.

The Leveling of Listening

One of my many unprovable theories about the history of music in our mechanized culture concerns the ear: what happens to it when it does not receive proper nurturing.  Like every other living thing it atrophies.

I believe the trouble started with the piano.  A new invention, a radical departure from every other extant keyboard instrument, it made puzzling sounds because of its acoustic-mechanics.  Key leverage directly affected resonance causing dissonances to sprout up in all the wrong places.

Unable to tolerate this chaos piano teachers devised ways to mask the effect.  First, let's equalize all the fingers so that we aim to hear uniformity in whatever notes we play with whatever finger.  That solves the problem of unpredictability while, at the same time, erasing all hope of touch-sensitive playing, i.e., real expressivity.

Second, let's encourage mindless repetitiveness in our students so that the parents know they are getting their money's worth in terms of piano lessons guaranteeing healthy life habits.  (Good luck with that one!)

Then we have the recording industry applying its rules of acceptable resonance, cleaning up all extraneous vibration.

And now we even have piano builders making instruments that do not have this extraordinary characteristic: the keys are weighted so that they all sound the same, no matter what.

Know what?  You can have it.