I was about to close the browser for the night and am truly way too drunk to properly chime in here, but I must…
I was wrongly told in music classes as a child that certain key signatures resulted in certain emotional responses (ie, minor keys sound sad, major keys sound positive or even triumphant–Chopin liked E Major for his bombastic stuff, C# minor for his introspective stuff.
Do you see what I did there?
E Major and C# minor are the same fucking thing, but only in equal temperament.
So why did Chopin choose different key signatures for his happy vs. sad compositions even though the notes the player presses on the keyboard are exactly the same?
The answer is that they are not the same thing in Well Temperament. In fact they sound quite different. Chopin was a god, but I never wept at the middle movement of his 2nd Concerto until I heard it in well-temperament.
I will do some work in the spirit of the Dope and provide examples of different temperaments, but that will be tomorrow.
I understand the point you are trying to make, but I think it would be better to compare E Major to another major key. Even in equal temperament, a major key sounds different to its relative minor key, despite their sharing the same notes. In C# minor, you will tend to start and end on C#, for example, and dwell on certain notes more than you would in E major. There is a clear sense that C# is the root note, not E, and since other notes are perceived relative to the root the intervals are different.
I don’t think Dio2112 is saying for you to compare the keys. In equal temperament, there’s no reason to pick those two keys. But when you listen in well-temperament, there is a reason. You are dealing with the same intervals (with a few extra notes for minor). The color is therefore similar.
I was going to point out to Dio2112 that major and minor keys do indeed sound different, as major and minor chords sound different. But I assume that loose wording is due to the innebriation previously mentioned, and we’ll get a better explanation when they’ve sobered up.
Your comment is correct for well temperament but today’s pianos normally use equal temperament, which is equally well-tuned (or poorly tuned) in every key. How about Mozart’s piano?
I have a quick browse in a favourite book, “How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care)” by Ross Duffin. In this book Mozart is specifically mentioned in the history of temperaments, but more so his father, Leopold. Leopold was well know as the author of a seminal work on violin technique, and was keenly aware of the complex harmonic nature of intonation and tuning. One of the important theorists of the time was Tosi, who developed a 55 division octave to cope with the issues. There exists a letter from Leopold to Wolfgang specifically mentioned Tosi’s work. Further, there are remaining bits of written music and text from Wolfgang giving composition lessons where the idea of major and minor semitones is explicitly covered. This is exactly the D# != Eb question. (A tone is divided into 9 parts, a major semitone is 5/9 and a minor semitone is 4/9 of a tone. )Thus we know for certain that Wolfgang both understood and worked within the differentiated enharmonic notes. He differentiated between the tuning of keyboard instruments and instruments that had no such harmonic restrictions (i.e. the violin.) The book notes that we don’t know what the intonation of Wolfgang’s Fortepiano was, but is sure that it was some irregular form, and would not have been equal temperament.
The important point about these irregular temperaments was that they explicitly favoured some keys over others, making favoured keys much closer to the correct pitch, at the expense of almost wrecking it for other keys. Thus Emaj and C#min would end up playing very differently. The important intervals (ie, 3,5,7) of a favoured scale would fit very well for one key, but although the notes are the same, they do not occupy the same roles in the relative key, and thus may end up quite out of tune.
This statement is false. All keys were in play by the Baroque period. Sure, the keys with 3 or fewer sharps or flats are used the most for the tonic key of a composition, especially in non-keyboard music, but in the composition composers could (and did) modulate to any key they wanted. Keyboard music starting using every available key by Bach’s day (e.g. his Das Wohltemperierte Klavier.)
The piano Mozart played had 3 fewer octaves than a modern piano, had only 2 strings per note, had a wooden frame instead of metal and was strung with less than 1/4 of the tension of modern pianos.
It was a regular course of business for keyboardists of the day (e.g. harpsichordists) to tune their own instrument. It would have been just as absurd at the time for a harpsichord player to call in a tuner as it would have been for a violin or guitar.
A tuning hammer came as stock equipment with the Walter fortepiano Mozart played. The fortepiano had simple hammer/strikers covered in leather or cloth that weren’t adjustable. The entire tone, frequency, pitch, and vibration was based purely on how tightly the string was strung between to fixed points like any stringed instrument.
As fortepianos slowly gained popularity over the harpsichord people who weren’t musically inclined began to buy them just for the novelty and they needed to hire a musician to play them who also usually served as the tuner. As the modern piano evolved, became significantly heavier with a steel frame and 3 more octaves, added an extra string per note, tinkered with various different tunings and temperament, the need grew ever greater for professional piano tuners. As ‘piano fever’ set in around the world and every household simply had to have one, even though nobody was musically inclined enough to tune it, the profession of piano tuner as we know it today came to be. The early tuners were direct employees of the piano maker, trained and sent out from the factory on house calls (this being more modern day times by now, and mostly in England, not Vienna) but at the time of Mozart that was a non-existent service.
As I said in my first post a few lazy google searches didn’t provide anything definitive, like a painting of Mozart turning his piano or a diary entry about it, but it is very probable based on all other evidence that Mozart tuned his own piano.
Perfect pitch, temperament, the personal opinion of a piano tuner all notwithstanding, the only real question here is if Mozart was able to use his tuning hammer to tighten or loosen a string until it was at the pitch he wanted it to be. It is certain that he could.
Hereis an interesting discussion about the tuning methods Mozart’s old pop, Leo, invented and taught to his son. He applied his dad’s theories about violin tuning to the piano. There is quite a bit of technical information here that I simply don’t understand but the professional musicians and piano tuners among us might.
What I can take from it, is that you better believe Mozart understood the intricacies involved in tuning his keyboard and did it often.
I don’t agree that your link supports anything like “he did it often.”
I am now convinced that he had the expertise to do it. But this is very far from concluding he did himself “often.” Mozart’s composing kept him insanely busy through his adolescence well until he died. I think unless you’re a musician it’s hard to realize grasp how much time Mozart spent just sitting over manuscript paper and ink. It was a gigantic amount of time that he worked, by any standard. Music copying by hand, even doing it as quickly as possible, is very, very time-consuming. By all accounts Mozart could compose almost as fast as he could write it down, but that’s still a HUGE amount of time just scribbling notes on paper.
My doubt has been mainly based on how much time he would have had for such chores, and my guess is that he would have consistently prioritized his time for composing over anything as mundane as tuning his keyboards. I simply can’t believe he would have chosen to do his own tuning when he had so much music to write and copy out.
The assertion is based not just on the evidence that Mozart since early childhood had been instructed on tuning and tuning variations, including temperament of keyboards, alternative tunings of keyboards, etc, but also all the other evidence that tuning their own piano was no more unusual for a musician of the time than tuning their own harpsichord or cello.
Now you are saying that while all of that may well be true, he probably still had some servant do it just because he didn’t have time to hassle with it.
I don’t discount that could be possible but I would ask you to provide some evidence that backs that theory up. I think the statement that he tuned his keyboard frequently is very well grounded in available evidence and logical inference until something factual comes along to disprove it.
I don’t agree. And saying tuning a keyboard of the time is comparable to tuning a cello is ludicrous. Simply ludicrous.
It’s speculation on both our parts. I freely admit I’m speculating. But I am very aware of how busy Mozart was simply getting notes down, since I am a composer myself, and I simply cannot believe he would prioritize his working time tuning his keyboards over composing. He may have tweaked his instruments on his own, but I still think it’s far-fetched to conclude that he habitually tuned them himself.
I don’t think we’re going to agree without new evidence. I have already conceded that he had the expertise from his father’s training, but that is far from showing he tuned his own keyboards consistently once he was an independent professional living and working in Salzburg and Vienna.
That is also far from what the discussion was originally until I provided evidence that he A) did have the expertise and B) so did almost anyone else of the time who would spend an average of 3 years salary to buy a fortepiano and C) Pianos of the time needed frequent tuning.
You are also overlookoing the relative simplicity of the piano of the time, the some 100 fewer strings to tune than a modern piano, the much more frequent need of tuning than a modern piano, and the simple conclusion that if Mozart was working on pieces for alternative tunings of the piano, he was the most qualified person in the world to tune that particular piano.
I’m sorry, but this silly. Mozart was not famous for piano tuning. Or building. Or for developing tuning systems. There were others who did that. Mozart was famous for being a keyboard virtuoso and for composing. That’s what he spent his time on; the latter more than the former once he was an adult.
I think you don’t appreciate how much time it would take to even copy out by hand (let alone compose) all of Mozart’s scores he wrote from, say, age 16 to his death.
I’ve cited a a lot of factual information that supports my side of this endless loop argument from many different aspects of the question. You have provided so far, zero. Just your personal hunches about the way things must have been.
If or when you do find any historical evidence to support the somewhat ridiculous notion that Mozart didn’t regularly tune his own keyboard I will certainly be open to reading it.
You really don’t think the huge amount time Mozart necessarily had to spend at the composing desk would impact time he had available for mundane chores such as keyboard tuning? Really? You simply can’t acknowledge that possibility?
My personal hunches, by the way, are based on having read biographies of Mozart, holding bachelor’s, masters, and doctorate degrees in music, being a composer, being a tenured music professor at a major university, having been a professional performing musician my entire adult life. I can identify by ear every Mozart symphony, including by specific movement, from Symphony No. 29 on, and have performed most of the same with professional orchestras. I could go on. I have also spent time copying out Mozart’s scores by hand to study them (a common practice from his day I thought I’d try.)
However, I am not a musicologist. I might consult some I know personally because I am actually curious about this. Are you one?
But what I don’t need to do is continue arguing with someone who won’t acknowledge the legitimate points I have made.
All that, and any cite of historical record, would certainly change it from a hunch to at least a theory. But you still aren’t providing any. This opinion should be easy to substantiate if it was true, much easier than it has been for me to substantiate that he did in fact tune his own piano. This is harder to substantiate because it is just what was expected, of him, or any other musician of the day. It would really only have been documented that he did have a personal tuner, nobody would make special note if he didn’t.
Tuning a harpsichord and early pianos was part and parcel with the job of composer and musician. I do realize the monumental work that he did and I also believe he frequently tuned his keyboard, too.
The great masters were the great masters because they made the time. If you gave him an 88 key grand concert piano today he would ask - first of all for a whole bunch of paper and some ink - and second, very likely some help learning how to tune it, not where to find someone to do it for him. When he realized it stayed in tune for months or years he would see that as welcome news, I’m sure but I doubt that keeping his piano in tune really got in the way of his work as a musician.
