Pablo Casals and "Expressive Intonation"

Catalan cellist Pablo Casals said in 1955 that he employed "expressive
intonation" rather than tempered intonation. Though he stated that he
didn't think there was anything of value in composing with quartertones,
thirdtones or tenthtones, he was known traditionally for his "expressive
intonation." This past Christmas I played his C minor and D minor Bach
Cello Preludes and analyzed them successfully according to Werckmeister
III tuning, apparently intuitively. Casals described his ideas thusly:

"Intonation, as it is conceived today, has such sensitiveness and subtlety
that the intonation of note must affect the listener quite apart from any
stimulating accent. The necessity of observing it is understood and
observed by all good instrumentalists. In our day, the public would not
accept a good soloist if he did not play in tune. Singers are taught
"tempered" intonation, but I have noticed that the most gifted and the
most artistic ones realise the importance and the subtelety of perfect
intonation. The principle I am speaking of is of varied character in its
application to string instruments. I make an exception for double-stopped
playing: in this case one must compromise between expressive intonation
and the "tempered" one.

"I can give a demonstration which would astonish many people: for example
I can prove with my system that there is a greater distance between a Db
and a C# than there is in a semitone like C-Db or C#-D natural.

"It is a pity that such an essential part of performance as this real
intonation should be, is still so neglected by some teachers. The other
day when I was giving a young pupil his first lesson, I asked him how he
had been taught; he said he had been taught intonation from the tempered
piano. So you see what work he will have to do to correct this!"
-- Pablo Casals

The translater had one slant on the above and a footnote references
another. I prefer to take Casals at his word. That is: that tempered
intonation is mathematically exact 12-tone equal temperament but it is by
its very nature unnatural. So for expressive imperitives, in order to
draw the truest character out of music, notes are distorted from their
mathematical ideal. The Db is sometimes stretched so low for a dark shape
of interval, while a C# is striving up so high to lead to the next,that
their abstract disctance can be measured as greater than the conventional
12ET semitone. (This of course assumes that C# is higher than Db as in the
Pythagorean/12ET theory of pitch ordering.)

Johny Reinhard
Director
American Festival of Microtonal Music - MicroMay '97 (May 16, 21-23)
318 East 70th Street, Suite 5FW
New York, New York 10021 USA
(212)517-3550/fax (212) 517-5495
reinhard@idt.net
http://www.echonyc.com/~jhhl/AFMM/


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> And, Marion's comment that he thought people gravitated to eq temps
>because they were "easier"...easier in what way?

I think he probably means easier than dynamically-retuned JI.






>...yes, I am bored to tears with 12 eq, but you
>"just" champions better get on the ball, then, and do some serious
>playing and composing, instead of chattering...then, your words will have
>more real depth and meaning

Marion has produced quite a bit of JI music, by the way.



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