Laptop?

[Susan Kline]

Dear Horace and all,

As a string player this is too exciting to leave alone. Horace's full
paragraph is included below, at the end.

>The third time through, the
>>answer struck me:  in the scale where the "D" sounded flat, it was
>>performing the function of the flat 7th, as opposed to the other scales, in
>>which is was either the tonic or the dominant.  Playing the flat 7th as he
>>did, Kogan set up the necessary tension for the subsequent "D"s to provide
>>harmonic relief and , therefore, a more highly "colored" (and , to my ear,
>>exciting) episode.

This is a precise and accurate description of what string players (at least
the ones around me when I was studying) call "expressive intonation". Only
people who have truly mastered intonation can use it at all without sounding
out of tune, let alone use it in a musically intelligent fashion. It usually
involves making a semitone smaller in such a way as to increase the desire
to resolve it. The leading tone _leads_ more when it is closer to the tonic.
In the case of the dominant 7th chord, the 7th "yearns" to resolve downward,
therefore Leonid Kogan played it lower, so it wants to resolve even more.
Doing it convincingly puts one right at the top of the profession.

To a string player, tempered semitones, being so large, come across as
impersonal, somewhat cold, lacking heart.

Piano tuners, working only with tempered scales, don't usually notice this,
let alone interpret it correctly. (At least, I haven't been aware of them
doing so.)

Regarding the "Great Tuneoff" -- Systems of intonation are conventions, in
that what we hear a lot tends to sound right to us. That is illustrated by
the music in places like India employing different scales from the one we use.

Is it possible that the "machine" tuning sounded better to some of the
audience because they tune by machine day after day? This is not to
criticize the tuning, which I'm sure was superb! I know that people using
machines use their ears as well, and that it can be used to duplicate a
tuning made aurally. Still, does it have a long-term effect on what we call
"right" to use the SAT every day?

Horace from a day or two ago ("Flat A"):

>If your technique is sound, you "should" be able to establish a given pitch
>(A=440Hz, if one needs that) from just about any reasonable starting point.

Precisely. >The scale should be independent of the means employed. (whether
one is playing it or tuning it.)

Always fun, this kind of thing!

Susan
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Horace wrote:
>Put another way, I recently found some re-releases of performance
>recordings made by Leonid Kogan.  One of the disks contains a recording of
>the Tschaikovsky Violin Concerto (with the St. Petersburg Symphony)
>conducted by Constatin Sylvestri.  In the first movement, developement
>section, the solo violin has several ascending scales/arpeggios which end
>on a "D".  One of these, on first hearing sounded flat as opposed to the
>others, which were "perfectly" in tune.  Fascinated by what seemed to be a
>pitch error from a violinist noted for (relatively) perfect intonation, I
>listened several times to this movement.  The third time through, the
>answer struck me:  in the scale where the "D" sounded flat, it was
>performing the function of the flat 7th, as opposed to the other scales, in
>which is was either the tonic or the dominant.  Playing the flat 7th as he
>did, Kogan set up the necessary tension for the subsequent "D"s to provide
>harmonic relief and , therefore, a more highly "colored" (and , to my ear,
>exciting) episode.
Susan Kline
P.O. Box 1651
Philomath, OR 97370
skline@proaxis.com

"Agree with me now: it will save so much time."
			-- Ashleigh Brilliant