On Chopin and Temperament

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Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe, praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.

Psalm 150:3-6

I was listening to Sam Leith’s interview of Paul Kildea on the Spectator Books podcast while I was driving. Their discussion turned to some of the reasons that Chopin’s 24 Preludes probably sounded very different when played today compared to when he played them on his piano’s, while composing them, one of which was simply a small composition pianino. One reason for the difference in sound is that the production quality of keyboard instruments is much more standardized today, so that notes played the same way on several different pianos will sound roughly equal, especially when compared to three different pianofortes, in Chopin’s day.

The other reason is related but a bit more complex in nature. There is, I found while I was listening to the podcast, an aspect of music called temperament, further investigation showed me that this is basically a musical tuning term. Today, most of our music uses equal temperament, but it seems equal temperament is not an ancient thing.

I don’t know a lot about musical science, but my somewhat simplistic understanding of temperament begins with the knowledge that when you tune an instrument you are trying to get it play a particular note. You do this so that when you take a particular action you hear a preset, or expected, note… rather than a random one. Ideally you want your modern day instrument to play 12 notes in each octave because that is how much the science of sound physics, combined with the preference of the human ear, seems to identify as being present. To achieve this the maker and tuner of the instrument have to manipulate the distance between various splits of the scale, specifically the thirds and fifths. This may all sound very complicated, but what it essentially means is that, in order to have a reliable way of striking the note they want, the musician needs their instrument to manipulate the octave range somehow to improve their chances both of hitting the note and have it sounding in tune to the human ear. Simply put, they need to gain control over the vibration range in a reliable, and repeatable, way.

Prior to certain manufacturing technology it was very difficult and expensive to produce a wide range of notes accurately on an instrument with multiple octaves. In Chopin’s day this was usually worked around by something referred to as “meantone temperament.” In other words, the craftsman worked hard to make sure that there was at least one, or some, octaves of the pianoforte whose notes were particularly accurate, while notes outside of this were less accurate. This is especially true for smaller keyboard instruments like the small pianino that Chopin used to finish his 24 Preludes. The composer and player then used the reliable range of notes as the main areas of musical composition and play, avoiding moving outside of this unless necessary or for effect. This would have given a slightly “on edge” feel to notes played outside the scale and introduced an element of risk to their playing, because there was no guarantee the note would be hit cleanly and in tune. It would be somewhere near it, but not as fully in tune as our modern ears prefer. So music as played by Chopin himself, who played as he composed on his pianino, (and who I understand is likely to have been moving outside the reliable range of his little pianino a fair bit,) was likely to have sounded to us quite unstable, unnerving in its unpredictability and rather haunting.

Gradually though the arrival of the ability to produce equal temperament on European keyboard instruments became more common. To produce this more equal temperament of notes across the keyboard the distance between thirds and fifths of scales is manipulated. Technology meant that this could be applied to all octaves and hence “equal temperament” took the place of “meantone temperament” as the dominant tuning system for specific western instruments such as the piano. This meant that keys on a keyboard had the same chance of playing the note in tune as every other key on the keyboard, regardless of which octave they were in. In this way equal temperament as a widespread system of tuning has not only altered the way we listen to the work of composers such as Chopin, it has shaped our expectations of the nature of music in general. We are no longer as accepting of discordant notes, even the briefest waver from the tuning we perceive as correct irks us. Off key notes savage our musical funny bone and leave us indignant at the assault on our senses.

What really intrigues me though is how this parallels life in our society. The latent meaning and dualism behind the use of the word “temperament” to describe this musical tuning nirvana is simply too much for me to ignore. You see people and their natures, their social graces, their temperaments… also don’t naturally fit a system of octaves with thirds of equal ranges, but that hasn’t stopped us trying to make them. Who are misfits? Society’s so called, “deviants.” Well one thing they are is a note that isn’t quite in tune. We want our symphony, our ballad, our rock and roll quartet, and most especially our advertising jingle, to sound good. We want to impress and who can be impressed when notes are out of tune, who can be impressed when people are not quite fitting in, when they say the wrong thing at the wrong time, in the wrong place, with the wrong voice, looking the wrong way! Well what if our approach to life was more like Chopin’s approach to composition, accepting that not all notes will sound equal in temperament, and building his composition around it, because that was what his music was meant to be.

What is our music meant to be? And, can anyone join in and play, or is it just for the tuneful, the perfect, the beautiful people? After all we listen to Chopin being equally temperamented, (I made that word up) while we equalize muscle tone, and practice our socially acceptable punch lines, while waiting for the botox swelling to die down.

Paul Kildea relays that the Nazi’s spent years trying to keep Chopin’s pianino safe, they moved it around from city to city to avoid it being blasted to bits as they gradually learnt that their twisted theory of the emergence of a perfect race would never be. They considered themselves the little pianino’s protector, and they did protect it. It is pitifully ironic that in their horrific quest for the master race, a malevolent evil protected one of the very things that can teach us that it is the imperfections in us all, the outsider amongst us, that brings true beauty to our society.

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References:

Spectator Books. (Publisher). (2018, June 8^th). Paul Kildea: Chopin’s Piano [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://audioboom.com/channels/4905582.rss

Kildea, P. (2016). Chopin, The Nazis, and the Spanish Piano. Retrieved from https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/chopin-the-nazis-and-the-spanish-piano

Also referred to:

Wikipedia. Piano Tuning. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_tuning

Wikipedia. Musical Temperament. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_temperament