At 10:34 PM 11/30/2007, Richard Brekne <ricb at pianostemmer.no> wrote >I'm not sure Mozart't perfect pitch had any impact one way or the >other on music history. I am relatively sure that his <<perfect >pitch>> would be in significant disagreement with most peoples ><<perfect pitch>> today. Interesting to note that ofte times >American singers relate their <<perfect pitch>> to 440 where as >Europeans relate theirs to 442... also interesting to note that >recent studies show that this phenomenon evidently occurs far more >often in countries with tonal languages like Vietnamese more then it >does here in the west. Mozart's perfect pitch? In Mozart's day there was no concept of "standard pitch" whatsoever. Pitch was basically set locally by the wind instrument makers and their traditional designs. I am pretty sure that he had to deal with one pitch standard in Saltzburg (unless there were competing makers each with their own pitch). And when he toured Europe in his teens he had to contend with whatever the local pitch was wherever he played. And when he moved to Vienna, I am pretty sure that there was a variety of pitches to contend with. The only thing that can be conjectured from surviving instruments of that era that generally pitch was somewhere around A=430 (with many exceptions). As late as 1860 the city of Paris had 5 known pitch standards: each of the 3 opera houses had its own pitch, the Church had its pitch and the military bands had their pitch. So, if Mozart had anything resembling "perfect pitch" it must have driven him totally nuts. Back in Boston I had a client who was a violinist, with perfect pitch. At some point she got interested in Historical Performance - first on Baroque Violin, then on Classical Violin - and had to go back and forth between A=440, A=430 and A=415 depending on the gig. That was not the fun part of experimenting with historical instruments for her... Israel Stein
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