Perfect tuning

[Horace Greeley]

Richard, et al,

At the risk of bringing down the wrath of all, please read below:

At 07:33 PM 2/4/97 -0600, you wrote:
>
>
>----------
>> From: Horace Greeley <hgreeley@leland.Stanford.EDU>
>> To: pianotech@byu.edu
>> Subject: Re: Perfect tuning
>> Date: Tuesday, February 04, 1997 3:00 PM
>>
>Horace writes
>>
>, you might want to
>> compare the diatonic intonation between the violin and the viola.
>
>I  have always wondered what happens if the pianist plays middle C and the
>violinist plays the E tenth above, and holding that, the pianist then plays
>that E.  The piano tenth beats ten beats per second sharp of pure. The
>piano can't adjust, so the violinist must.  I have always wanted to ask if
>they hear this and how or if they adjust. Perhaps through vibrato?
>
>Richard Moody
>>
>
>

The better ones (read real musicians) do hear and adjust.  Instrumentalists
tend to play in what I refer to as a "floating" just intonation - that is,
everything is in tune (one hopes) at any given moment, but that moment
might (and probably is) "out of tune" with the ones immediately preceding
and succeeding it.  This not, as we have been discussing in the general
thread on tuning, an exact science.  I'll bend things to the point of
breaking _iff_ I think that there is a sound musical reason for so doing.
This is why it is so important (at least in serious concert work) to have
some sense of the literature.

If you do much work with orchestras, listen carefully to the second chair
woodwinds.  Much of the blame that goes to the strings for jacking up pitch
lies with folks who insist on playing what amount to equally tempered
thirds when they are in first position...

Grass for rumination.

Best.

Horace

Horace Greeley

"We learn from history that we learn nothing from history"

			- George Bernard Shaw

Stanford University
email: hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu
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