Perfect Pitch

[Israel Stein]

At 10:34 PM 11/30/2007, Richard Brekne <ricb at pianostemmer.no> wrote

>I'm not sure Mozart't perfect pitch had any impact one way or the 
>other on music history.  I am relatively sure that his <<perfect 
>pitch>> would be in significant disagreement with most  peoples 
><<perfect pitch>> today.  Interesting to note that ofte times 
>American singers relate their <<perfect pitch>> to 440 where as 
>Europeans relate theirs to 442... also interesting to note that 
>recent studies show that this phenomenon evidently occurs far more 
>often in countries with tonal languages like Vietnamese more then it 
>does here in the west.

Mozart's perfect pitch? In Mozart's day there was no concept of 
"standard pitch" whatsoever. Pitch was basically set locally by the 
wind instrument makers and their traditional designs. I am pretty 
sure that he had to deal with one pitch standard in Saltzburg (unless 
there were competing makers each with their own pitch). And when he 
toured Europe in his teens he had to contend with whatever the local 
pitch was wherever he played. And when he moved to Vienna, I am 
pretty sure that there was a variety of pitches to contend with. The 
only thing that can be conjectured from surviving instruments of that 
era that generally pitch was somewhere around A=430 (with many exceptions).

As late as 1860 the city of Paris had 5 known pitch standards: each 
of the 3 opera houses had its own pitch, the Church had its pitch and 
the military bands had their pitch.

So, if Mozart had anything resembling "perfect pitch" it must have 
driven him totally nuts. Back in Boston I had a client who was a 
violinist, with perfect pitch. At some point she got interested in 
Historical Performance - first on Baroque Violin, then on Classical 
Violin - and had to go back and forth between A=440, A=430 and A=415 
depending on the gig. That was not the fun part of experimenting with 
historical instruments for her...

Israel Stein