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From: tpermutt@eng.umd.edu (Thomas Permutt)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Transposing early music (was: Perfect Pitch)
Message-ID: <1991Mar20.154120.24561@eng.umd.edu>
Date: 20 Mar 91 15:41:20 GMT
References: <1991Mar18.214745.6496@spool.cs.wisc.edu> <1991Mar19.082948.10987@athena.mit.edu> <3722@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP>
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In article <3722@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP> carroll@ssc-vax.UUCP (Jeff Carroll) writes:
>In article <1991Mar19.082948.10987@athena.mit.edu> jsc@riddler.MIT.EDU (Jin S Choi) writes:
>
>>the difference. A slightly more relevant case: many classical tapes are 
>>recorded to play back at a slightly higher pitch than recorded. This is 
>
>	I believe that this does serious violence to the composer's music.

What do you advocate doing about early music?  There is evidence that A
in, say, Handel's time was lower than today (I can't remember how much,
but more than a semitone).  Aside from the psychoacoustic subtleties
you mention, there are real differences:  the sound of a tenor singing
his highest note is quite a bit different from that of a note a semitone
or two lower, and sensitive composers used these differences to good effect.
Tenors today may be physically different to some extent, but probably not
precisely in such a way that A-440 now has the quality of A-420 or whatever
then.