observations of a cellist

I like to think of the 12 note chromatic scale as a grid indicating rough location and printed music as a guide -- the essence of music is that the only adequate expression of music is itself.

You can't be a little out of tune any more than you can be "a little" pregnant--saying attributed to Janos Starker.

Right now, being "in tune" is an intuitive concept for me something I deal with on an operational level. I am either in tune or out of tune and there are such a thing as 'bad intonation days.'

Aside from consonance/dissonance there is the issue of expression -- a sharp major second can go a long way making Bartok sound like Bartok.

Could there be a family of issues that fall under the rubric of intonation? We have the inherent nature of the intervals, we have expression((para)linguistic mimesis), Compromise with other musicians, instruments. Cultural conditioning?

I remember once practicing my cello at college, I was working on the 2 mvt of Brahms' sonata in E minor. A friend who happened to be from Nepal heard me play and commented that I was out of tune. I was indignant but he was probably right. I was playing the pitches accurately as notated and he grew up listening to his Indian music. The cello part of the Sonata is not meant to stand alone-- without the harmonic underpining or a tacit understanding of the harmony, the piece doesn't work.

I am curious if there are any microtonal analysis of cellist or violinists playing Bach unaccompianied. I suspect that the musician works out a "temperment" unique to the music different perhaps than the temperments we find ossified in keyboards.

>I am curious if there are any
>microtonal analysis of cellist or violinists playing Bach unaccompianied.
>I suspect that the musician works out a "temperment" unique to the music
>different perhaps than the temperments we find ossified in keyboards.

I hear hours of unaccompanied cello and violin (and contrabass!) in a
month, those being faves of my wife. I haven't measured, but to my ears,
the intonation is clearly not 12TET. Violins and cellos are tuned to
perfect fifths, after all, and like singers, string players are free to
sweeten those intervals as called for.

John Thaden
Little Rock, Arkansas, USA
http://www.flash.net/~jjthaden