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Post by Beagle April 6, 2011 (2 of 5)
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Stainer violins were "the Strads" of their day, the creme-de-la-creme when music was played in rooms rather than auditoriums, so their string tension was optimised for sweetness, not volume.
--What you are hearing presumably is the 'pitch inflation' between Biber's era when A approximated 415Hz and our own when A runs from 440 to 443Hz, depending upon which side of the Atlantic you are listening to. Generally speaking, the human brain happily hears harmony and melody as relative qualities at any pitch (unless juvenile music lessons have left you accursed with 'perfect pitch').
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Post by Fugue April 6, 2011 (3 of 5)
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It sounds better on the m-ch SACD than on YouTube... :-)
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Beagle said:
--What you are hearing presumably is the 'pitch inflation' between Biber's era when A approximated 415Hz and our own when A runs from 440 to 443Hz, depending upon which side of the Atlantic you are listening to. Generally speaking, the human brain happily hears harmony and melody as relative qualities at any pitch (unless juvenile music lessons have left you accursed with 'perfect pitch').
Or is it the scordatura tuning that seems sour to sunnydaler?
Kal
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Beagle said:
What you are hearing presumably is the 'pitch inflation' between Biber's era when A approximated 415Hz and our own when A runs from 440 to 443Hz, depending upon which side of the Atlantic you are listening to. Generally speaking, the human brain happily hears harmony and melody as relative qualities at any pitch (unless juvenile music lessons have left you accursed with 'perfect pitch').
Concert A in Beethoven's day hovered around 43O, 415 being an even bigger difference from today. Biber is 17th century (c.1644-1704). I heard a period performance of Beethoven's 3rd Symphony and decided that I prefer it pitched to 430 rather than 440. The latter sounds too high to me. You're not the first to describe perfect pitch as a curse, but, as you might guess from my preference for historically informed performance, I don't have that problem.
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