Takahiro Sonoda Lecture 10 (English) / Concert Hall ATM

1-6-8 Goken-cho, Mito-shi, Ibaraki-ken, 310-0063 Japan
Mail to: webstaff@arttowermito.or.jp / Phone: (029)227-8111

Takahiro Sonoda
Mini-lecture #10: About Perfect Pitch and Sense of Sound
Open Seminar for Piano Feb. 13, 2000 (Sun.)

In today's mini-lecture, I'd like to talk about something that you are all probably interested in: absolute pitch (AP), also known as perfect pitch. It's been talked about a lot, and books have even been written on the subject, but that stuff is mainly done by people who don't understand music very much. It is really rather trivial whether or not one can pinpoint exactly what a particular sound is -- musicians don't try to guess each note of a chord that they play, and it doesn't make any sense to brag about it either. Whenever I hear people say that the main purpose of AP is to be able to pick out particular sounds or the notes of chords, I am suddenly seized with anger; but it's no use to try and debate such things with nonprofessionals.

Anyway, a musician's work is intimately involved with the sense of the sound. By "sense of sound," I mean the awareness of the changes in a sound's color or shade. Think about an artist who paints -- he or she won't feel right just vaguely mentioning the color "red," but will tell you about exactly what kind of red it is -- a dark red, or a deep red, or a blazing hot red, or a purplish red, or an orange-red. If a painter couldn't tell the difference between all those different reds, I would say he or she was in the wrong profession. The same thing could be said about the color blue: there are a whole lot of blues, aren't there? You have azure, such as in an azure sky, as well as dull blue and turquoise. Painters have to be able to respond to that sort of thing delicately as they carry out their creative work. Moreover, I believe they enjoy the fine differences between the different colors, not just covering a whole surface in the same one. If you substitute sound for what I have just mentioned about color, then that is what the sense of sound means to musicians. For example, we talk about how a chord "shines." Let me explain what I mean. When a sound is played --it doesn't matter whether a cat or a human plays it (there was once a heated debate about whether a sound played by a cat was different from a sound performed by a human) -- it is exactly the same sound as long as the number of vibrations is the same.

It is the mission of musicians and artists, then, to put a gloss onto that sound -- to make it shine -- when the keys are hit and the music performed. Although the number of vibrations may remain the same, musicians add gloss by adjusting the gradations of strength and density, even in the same harmony or chord. Well, then, why do we do that? The performer has to have a sense of -- has to seek -- the color of the sound if that is to be rendered.

While I can never know for sure since I have never been a dog, I hear that dogs' eyes are said to be capable of only seeing black and white. What they see can be thought of as resembling a black-and-white photograph. Any differences they perceive of density are only those of black and white. Dogs thus don't have a sense of color. Sorry to have to say this, but I believe that there some performers who are the same way. These kind of people -- who treat music just as if they were reading some codes and stringing the sounds together as they play -- have no understanding whatsoever about the sense of sound. It's a big problem.

I think it's completely ridiculous whether or not you have the ability to identify what a certain note is. As a matter of fact, I do have perfect pitch. However, what I learned as a child was the pitch of the piano at that time, or around 438Hz, not 440Hz. Now, however, they use a higher pitch of 442Hz or 445Hz, so when I think of "fa," it's really a little bit low. But that doesn't mean that I'm no good. There's something called relative pitch, and all musicians have the ability to sense that everything is too high or too low, for example, and rectify it. Also, having a sense of the sound is unrelated to having perfect pitch, and most people are not born with it, but acquire it as they go on playing music. But that, too, is something that nonprofessionals will not understand -- instead, only those who are actually in the field of music will know about it. And when people who don't understand something talk about what they don't know, they end up sounding even more clueless.

You know about such things as major and minor keys, right? Well, you often hear the argument that "equal temperament" is not the same as "just intonation." In fact, it isn't just intonation. Equal temperament involves a bit of fudging to make sure that all the keys can be played on the same keyboard. That requires some fudging of the intervals between the notes, letting all the keys be modulated. So it's not something that's pure. Still, we have major and minor keys.

However, while major keys seem the same, no matter how they are transposed, do you think that red, yellow, blue, and black are all the same? Of course they aren't. Pieces in C major key, for example, give us a certain image: of the sun rising, of broad expanses, of extreme festivity, or full harmony. Also, listening to pieces written by Beethoven or Mozart, you will soon understand that D minor (while it's not that way in Beethoven's 9th gives a feeling of foreboding -- like a sound arising from the depths of the earth, or the appearance of a premonition. In other words, it gives a feeling of unease or an ill omen. All musicians are able to sense that from the tonality (i.e., the key), based on which they write pieces and perform them.

It's utter nonsense to say that people without AP are good or no good. Nonetheless, in Japan, those people's arguments tend to get substituted and treated as important. Well, who cares, it doesn't really matter. I just had to get that off my chest (laughter). For us musicians, it's important to strive our utmost to polish the sense of the sound. E flat major, for example, is seen as heroic -- at least it was that way with Beethoven -- and that means that its relative key, C minor, is tragic. Well, anyway, there have been many pieces written in those keys, and statistics show that most of them are suffused with those particular feelings. If you can't get a sense of that when you play, then it doesn't matter what minor or major key you are using. I would really like to stress that point.

The thing that Japanese musical education fails to impart its students the most is not an understanding of AP, but rather a sense of tonality (i.e., the key). So when Japanese students go abroad to study, they have no clue what it means when they are told, for example, to "play something in G major." They don't what sound it is. People who are truly advanced, however, can do that. They can also tell if a key is C major or not. Music that is just played flat -- on the level -- is not music. You have to put a sense of drama into it. If you do that, you'll feel peace of mind when you hear a dominant triad followed by a dominant, then resolved into a tonic triad. The tension is found in sevenths and ninths. Beethoven used that technique when he charges the music up, making you wait for the release, and then lets it fall as if it were a natural phenomenon, such as a bolt of lightning. Performances of Beethoven directed by Furtwaengler are like that, as are those by Karajan.

If everyone were to hear those pieces in black and white, that would be a sad situation. To get a proper sense of the sound, you can't just learn music as if it were a string of letters. Unless your eyes, ears, and heart are directed toward the essence of the music that lays beyond, it will never be music, I think.

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