At 1:42 AM -0300 6/10/12, Darcy James Argue wrote: > >I'm all for spelling basic chord tones >consistently on parts that actually show the >entire harmony (piano, guitar). At no point >should anyone ever write a B major seventh chord >with an Eb and A#. But at at a certain point, >musicians of all stripes learn to tune by ear, >not by eye. So no, I'm not that sympathetic to >the idea that string players tune an F# and a Gb >differently, because in point of fact, *good* >string players learn to hear where they are in >the harmony and adjust accordingly, enharmonics >be damned -- just like wind players and brass >players.
Darcy: Christopher didn't just say that string players TUNE differently between F# and Gb (although good ones with good ears will do so within the context of a passage, which all three of us seem to agree on), but that they would call for different fingerings. And that is absolutely true, at least in terms of sightreading. Keys with lots of flats force the hand down into half position, which can get awkward. Keys with lots of sharps put the hand in what should be called first-and-a-half position, which is freer. (And I'm talking about sightreading, since fingerings can always be adjusted, but too many string players are locked into positions because of their training rather than treating the fingerboard as campo aperto!) Really good early music specialists are VERY aware of harmonic tuning (as opposed to melodic tuning), and HAVE to know which chord tone they're playing or singing in order to adjust the pitch to produce acoustically pure intervals. And really good musicians in any style do the same, even though they may not be aware of what they're doing because no one has ever explained it to them. In fact enharmonics are NOT equivalent, and there is plenty of evidence from the early 19th century and earlier to show that even beginners were taught the diffeences. I first ran into this spelling quandry when I was very young. My Mom was a very good and no-nonsense theory teacher as well as a pianist. When I spelled something incorrectly she jumped on me. My preference, both then and now at a much greater age, was and is to choose accidentals that LOOK the way they should sound, because it simply makes reading and playing easier. Augmented 2nds simply don't LOOK like minor thirds, but that's what they are and that's the way they're fingered. And a couple of years ago I did an arrangement for a pickup church orchestra that spent some time in the key of Gb major. Without thinking about it I kept the string parts in Gb. And boy, did they complain! The next week I brought new parts for them in F# major, and they were much happier. Did the notes change? NO! But the perception and therefore the comfort level changed, and that's important too. John -- John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music Virginia Tech Department of Music School of Performing Arts & Cinema College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences 290 College Ave., Blacksburg, Virginia 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[email protected]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html "Machen Sie es, wie Sie wollen, machen Sie es nur schön." (Do it as you like, just make it beautiful!) --Johannes Brahms _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
