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Perfect Pitch
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Slightly OT - 'perfect pitch' history |
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Tom Dent wrote (July 18, 2007):
One of the young Mozart's tricks was to name any note instantly by hearing alone - what we now call 'perfect pitch'. More scientifically 'absolute pitch' (AP). But is there any evidence of any other musician before 1800 possessing this ability?
I have seen claims that Bach, Handel, Beethoven and other Famous Composers had AP (eg in an article of Diana Deutsch) - but no credible sources for it.
Of course it would be rather more complicated in Bach's case - and probably for almost all Baroque musicians - since substantially different pitches were in use, even within the same city... |
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Nessie Russell wrote (July 19, 2007):
[To Tom Dent] Excellelnt question Tom. I have often wondered about this every time someone mentions the historical tunings. A at concert pitch means something to me. It will not mean the same to a person who plays on an instrument which is not tuned at concert pitch. I always want to gag when a parent of a student wants to know if the child has perfect pitch and I know the poor kid is playing on a piano which has not been tuned in years. |
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Ed Myskowski wrote (July 19, 2007):
[To Nessie Russell] The kid's pitch could be 'perfect' for that piano, no? Or is that absolute relative pitch?
I once heard a snippet of an interview with the late, great jazz vibes player, Milt 'Bags' Jackson. The interviewer noted that Bags was reputed to have perfect pitch, and asked if that was an asset.
Without hesitation, Bags responded (paraphrase): <Not really. If I'm sitting around listening to music with a bunch of cats, and the turntable is a bit off, everybody else is enjoying the music, and I'm just noticing that the turntable isn't quite right.>
Bags was more noted for his modesty, his humanity, his generosity of spirit, than for his 'perfect pitch'. Music unites us, or not. It is up to us. |
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Hendrick Oesterlin wrote (July 19, 2007):
[To Tom Dent]
I often heard about this faculty of recognising notes in an absolute manner. But there is no absolute manner to tune instruments and the a is not necessarily 440 Hz. The are differences from 415 to 442 Hz. This is equivalent of approx. one half-tone.
In addition, the intervals between the notes are not always equal. Think at the "Wolf interval" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_interval
Wikipedia, especially in the french and german version is quite informative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_tuning
I think that the "absolute pitch" is more an good faculty to remember notes heard previously for some time.
Am I wrong? |
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Nessie Russell wrote (July 19, 2007):
[To Ed myskowski] Relative pitch can be learnt. Most musicians have relative pitch. If someone plays a note and tells me what it is I can figure out the next note by listening to the interval or distance from the original note.
People are born with absolute or perfect pitch. You don't have to tell them what the first note is. They know it. |
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Jean Laaninen wrote (July 19, 2007):
[To Nessie Russell] This discussion reminds me of a funny time when I was in college. One of my roommates was a very good pianist, but her vibrato went anywhere from 25 to 35 cents in either direction--possibly more. Yet she claimed she was born with perfect pitch. However, vocally she could not produce anything but relative pitch. This of course just adds one more curve to the discussion. If a person has relatively good pitch that's a blessing. If a person has no sense of pitch that a shame, and musical performance is unlikely to be a strong suit. Having occasionally worked with children and pitch issues there can be many complications beginning with stress. For me, having trained for a few years under George Umberson in the ASU Choral Union, Concert A at 440, I think is home plate. Since many pieces for flute are written in D major, D is at least first base. But an ear infection, sinus infection or a cold can produce fluctuations in pitches produced in even the best of singers. So, in the end bless all those who can stay within whatever tuning is being used. That's my last thought for the day, I submit with a smile for all. |
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Cara Emily Thornton wrote (July 19, 2007):
[To Hendrik Oesterlin] Not exactly. Obviously it does have that element. But it is indeed more complicated than that. Because at least in our day, where there is not such a great range of 'acceptable A's', a musician with perfect pitch will develop a concept of 'A' that represents a range of 'acceptable' frequencies.
Back in Bach's time, it was even more complicated, because of the tuning issues. Then the ability to, for example, sing all the different A's in force in different places, be able to tune one's harpsichord without using any kind of tuning device, and be sure it will come out at the standard pitch for that particular locale, would come in to play (because perfect pitch does involve being able to do that, too).
For that matter, even people with relative pitch who have spent years tuning their instruments develop some concept of A. It may be a relatively general concept, and this may be responsible for the variety of standard A's to be found in the Europe of Bach's time - that there were few who had perfect pitch, and no tuning devices, so people were left to their somewhat vague memory of what an A sounds like.
I wonder if there was a 'standard frequency' for each locale at all, or whether that concept was superimposed later by people from an era where there was a measurable universal standard frequency, on the basis of what they found at a given place - how a given organ was tuned, most likely. It may be that the 'standard frequency' back in the old days in fact changed somewhat every time the organ was tuned.
My, umm, two cents |
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Tom Dent wrote (July 22, 2007):
Jean Laaninen wrote:
< This discussion reminds me of a funny time when I was in college. One of my roommates was a very good pianist, but her vibrato went anywhere from 25 to 35 cents in either direction--possibly more. >
That's a remarkable achievement for a pianist!
To be more serious, you couldn't develop any accuracy of absolute pitch with an out-of-tune piano - most of the notes have several strings which, it being out of tune, will have slightly different pitches. If the octaves are out of tune too, which is likely, heaven knows what might happen.
It can't be true that people are 'born' with perfect pitch, since the ability as we usually understand it requires you to be able to name pitches immediately. Perhaps it would be better to say that people are (may be) born with the ability to recognise pitches, and some later learn what certain pitches are called. |
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Jean Laaninen wrote (July 22, 2007):
[To Tom Dent] Thanks for this clarification. As to the pianist mentioned below, I don't think she could help the vibrato, and perhaps I exaggerate, but it was exceedingly difficult to sing next to her and keep a straight face, and any hope of a blend was out of the question. So perfect pitch must be a recognition ability rather than the gift of being able to produce an on target pitch as she intended others to believe. Another mystery solved... |
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Cara Emily Thornton wrote (July 23, 2007):
[To Jean Laaninen] Not exactly. Perfect pitch exists in both forms: 1) being able to recognize pitches (and there are people who can recognize any note when they hear it, but can't for the life of them sing any note asked for - you could call this 'passive perfect pitch' - there was a boy in my ear-training class in college who had this variant), and 2) being able to reproduce pitches (it is NOT necessary to know the names of the pitches - I once knew a gentleman who was not a musician (but rather a computer geek), who had no idea of the names of notes, but was able to remember perfectly and reproduce at will the exact pitches that are produced by pressing the keys on a touch-tone phone, which ability he used to procure touch-tone service for himself without having to pay for it...). And then there are people who can do both things (thiis probably the vast majority of people who are said to have 'perfect pitch' - including yours truly). So no, perfect pitch is NOT just a recognition ability. |
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Jean Laaninen wrote (July 23, 2007):
[To Cara Emily Thornton] Thanks, Cara. I bit my tongue all through college and did not say anything to this person, but I was indeed mystified by her claims. Then again, to put the best slant on things she probably understood her ability in the terms she used to describe herself, and since she was a very good pianist, to be respected for what she was able to do. To be honest here, I don't think I ever heard her correct the singing pitch of another person, and I guess this is a good place to leave off for me. I now have a broader outlook on this topic. |
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Cara Emily Thornton wrote (July 23, 2007):
[To Jean Laaninen] Was re-reading this thread, and I must say, you are a better woman than I, biting your tongue while singing next to a sound source that oscillates 25-30 cents on each note? I would have gone out my blinking mind!!! |
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Jean Laaninen wrote (July 23, 2007):
[To Cara Emily Thornton] Thanks, Cara. It was pretty hard to manage singing next to this girl, but my mother was a gracious woman and a good musician, and she taught all four of us to try to be considerate of the feelings of others. I have to chuckle when I think back because mother loved the beatitudes. I never really understood the verse, Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall inherit the earth, until my late fifties. Mother, music and peace were and are about survival, but I did feel a little out of my mind under the circumstances, and never really spoke to anyone about it until this topic came up. Your insight helps me to have insight. And I also have to laugh a little because my luck usually has been in choirs to either wind up next to someone with too much vibrato or someone who is having pitch problems. How funny. Now that I am retired and work on my own recordings I have discovered that I hit A, G and D dead center virtually all the time, and if I am off it is ordinarily three to five cents...occasionally a little more if I punch a note or something. So my awareness and the ear training from mixing and mastering has increased my observations. I have to remind myself however to listen for the message so I don't turn every listening experience into a tuning assignment. But, I do have to say that people with good pitch perception really appreciate it when the soloist can stay with the orchestra--and I am sure it goes both ways. |
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Julian Mincham wrote (July 30, 2007):
I haven't been able to read all of the recent postings or respond recently, but I came across a couple on the notion of perfect pitch which is an interesting subject.
I think someone mentioned that it wouldn't be an inherited gift as people would have to learn the names of the notes. However there's no reason why the ability to recall exact pitches should not be inherited ( personally I think that it is) and we learn what to call them later, within our own cultural settings.
It's a complicated business though and I think that there are different kinds and levels of perfect pitch. Some years ago I studied with an organist who could not name individual notes but could tell you in a few bars what key you were playing in. It was not a matter of association with known pieces as it also worked with improvisations.
I read some years ago in the BBC accompanist Gerald Moore's book the Unashamed Accompanist that he deliberately set about detroying his own sense of perfect pitch because it got in the way so much when he was transposing. I think that the English pianist Cyril Smith (another very readable biog called Duet for Three Hands) wrote of a tour in Russia in the 1950s when the pianos were up to a semitome out of pitch and the considerable intellectual feat he underwent of having to transpose everything mentally in his head as he played.
The problem of Bach and Cantata BWV 18 composers is very interesting. I find it difficult to believe that Bach did not have a keen sense of perfect pitch--but then how did he related this to the different fundamental pitches he was required to work with in his professional career? Perhaps he applied a sense or 'relativism' to the different circumstances--i.e. he recalled accurately the pitches of the notes of any scales given the different environments from which they originated. I'm not aware of any research done on this but would be interested if anyone has come across any.
Incidentally I read some years ago (can't recall where) that Schoenberg was one of the few great composers not to have had a sense of perfect pitch!
Some people may not be surprised at that! |
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