[Dixielandjazz] What a Difference a Key Makes

[Steve Barbone]

DWSI at aol.com asks:

> Did Steve really say this?
> 
> "One thing they seem to agree on is that on a piano, (or  a
> washboard) all keys should be the same..."
> 
> No serious student of the piano would ever agree, nor would any piano
> technician. Sorry, Steve, somebody is not listening out there. The keys should
> NOT 
> sound the same because of the way they were constructed originally by J. S.
> Bach. They were only almost equalized.
> 
> I think I'll read the newspaper instead from now on.

Oh my, here I am taken out of context again, and shot as the messenger.

Yes, I said that in context of a series of opinions, some by serious
students of the piano, some by composers, some by music chairs at
universities, etc., about equal temperament and its effects. It was a common
thread among their other opinions about music.

FOR EXAMPLE:

"Absolute" pitch is irrelevant to the "colour" of various tonalities. If the
only instrument available were a piano precisely tuned to 12 equally spaced
semitones there would be little point writing music other than in C major
because it would sound the same in any other key, only higher or lower. . ."

OR

"Until the 19th century, there really were differences between one key and
another. Only in modern times has equal temperament given every musical key
exactly the same intervals as any other. So in the past there may have been
some objective basis for claiming different keys felt different. Nowadays
this claim is purely subjective, although it may be influenced by a person's
memories of other pieces of music in the same key, or by symbolic factors
that are connected to factors other than sound--Mozart used Eb major as the
Masonic key, because it had three flats and three was the Freemasons'
mystical number."

OR

"Being myself a composer of symphonic music . . . For many years I assumed
that it was a complete fallacy that particular keys had particular absolute
qualities. After all, concert pitch these days is, I understand, something
like a whole tone higher than in Mozart's day, so his celebrated G Minor
symphony, for example, is nowadays played in something like the A minor of
Mozart's day-yet we accept today's performance as a reasonable
representation of Mozart's intentions. In fact the issue is considerably
more complex than this. There are two main factors to be borne in mind. One
is the actual pitch of the music, and the other is the sound-the timbre-of
each instrument at a particular pitch. Let's briefly look at these. Absolute
pitch: some of your readers may be surprised to learn that there is a strong
evidence that many, if not most, people do have intrinsic perfect pitch.
Through lack of training they haven't developed the ability to recognise
pitches at a conscious level by name, but with appropriate training they
could develop something of this ability. For at least most of us, particular
absolute pitches do have their specific resonances in the mind, and
therefore it is to be expected that even a semitone transposition of a
musical work would cause at least a small difference in the effect of the
work. Timbre: the sound and emotional effect of a musical scale is
determined not only by the particular sequence of musical intervals at
specific pitches, but also by the changes of timbre as the instrument moves
from pitch to pitch. Also, string players have to change from one string to
another at different points, and wind players similarly have to change
between fundamental and harmonic or between different harmonics at
particular points in their range. Here's a little experiment to try if you
have the resources. Take a real orchestra and take a recording of them
playing Mozart's G Minor Symphony tuned a tone lower than normal to
approximate to the likely original concert pitch for that work. Also take a
recording of them playing a version of the work transposed down a whole
tone-that is, in the root key in F minor. Compare the recordings. You'd find
that the two similarly-pitched performances had a different sound and at
least some difference of emotional quality."

---------end snips.

For those still not bored by this subject, I once again pass on the link to
serious  opinions about it:

http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/rightnote.html

Scroll down about halfway to "Perfect Pitch" for those opinions.

Therein is a plethora of opinions about equal temperament, J.S. Bach's
tuning, and pre modern tuning etc.

So before shooting the messenger, read the relevant portions of the subject
matter quoted from. Or better still, surf the entire web site which has more
information than most of us want to know about 18th Century tuning, Bach's
tuning, and the equal temperament tuning of today. And why equal temperament
on the piano should make all keys sound the same on the piano. (kind of like
Bill Gunter's Average Chord) And by the same token, why Orchestral tuning
and the differences in the tuning and timbre of wind and string instruments
do indeed make music sound different in different keys to many, if not most,
people.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone