The pitch of chant
  • Pes
    Posts: 623
    I've been fortunate lately to sing chant in a group of students led by the director of a professional choir. It has been interesting to observe how our director spaces out his vocal advice. He doesn't teach everything all at once. We bash away at the notes for a week or two, for example, and then, as he listens, he starts to tweak various things with us.

    One of the things that came up this past week was tuning. Pitch in chant, he said, is a kind of cloud. He encouraged us to sing certain notes sharp, saying that "in general, all notes in chant are sharp." If they are not, the cumulative effect is depressing. We tried various things, and he was exactly right. Thirds, in particular, are very important to sing sharp. The distance between Mi and Fa is also quite large. All notes have to be approached, as it were, "above the center." This might make the overall pitch of the chant to drift sharp, but if it's not by much, the overall effect is salutary.

    I know this is something a lot of beginning scholas shouldn't sweat, at least not greatly. But a little attention to it would be very good, as the overall effect is quite noticeable and helps to prevent the charge that chant sounds dreary.

    Thoughts?
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    Some are going to get crazy about this....but he's right because all intervals in a tuned piano are flat...so what is is asking is that people sing pure intervals rather than the tempered ones heard on pianos and most organs.

    If you are lucky enough to have a pipe organ that is tuned in an earlier temperament you will hear purer intervals. All digitals offer this.

    Earlier tuning systems are MUCH MORE in tune in C and WAY OUT OF tune in A flat or G Sharp. In fact, the older the temperament, the less useful are keys that use either of these notes. In some temperaments one of these will be useable and the other will not be...ues, I know that they are the same key that you play....try them in chords to see what this is about.

    Always, always use an earlier temperament when possible when teaching chant from a keyboard. Modern digital pianos also offer temperaments.

    But, do not transpose chant to keys distant from C when playing from a keyboard in a temperament.
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,943
    And even successive notes that appear to be the same are, IIRC, typically sung with a view to raising the pitch as things move forward.
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    As a string player, I can tell you that strings...good ones...have three different pitches they play for each note on the music depending upon the direction of the melody and the key.
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,217
    Well, yah....but a very good choral director of my acquaintance insists that a lot of 'church-choir' singers almost always sing the upper note of the 3rd flat. They also generally go flat when descending. That's usually mechanical--another very, very good conductor recc's "the eyebrow raise" on 3rds and descending lines.

    From your description, Pes, it sounds to me as though your conductor is attempting to gently correct mechanical/production problems--esp. with that "above the center approach" line.
  • Pes
    Posts: 623
    Yes, dad29, that's exactly what he's doing.

    What insight do you all have into the vowel/pitch relationship? Conflicting vowels sound bad together. Even with very similar vowel sounds there can be problems. We all know this from recordings. The best ensembles have these supple, ringing unisons, and it must have something to do with perfectly matched overtones.

    I was skeptical about all this until I attended a long workshop with a Tuvan throat singer. He was able, just with his mouth shape, to produce a whole range of whistle-like overtones at will. He taught us how to do it, too. Some of them, and the useful ones for our purposes, are easy to control. The long "o" sound can produce a clear octave. The long "a" sound (as in hooray) can produce a spectacular fifth. Long "e," if I recall correctly, produces a dissonance with the fundamental, I forget which. So does short "e," which is a bummer because "Amen" ends with it. Above that, things get considerably more difficult to produce because the changes in mouth architecture are small and subtle, but it's all obviously possible.

    The point is that I'm certain choirs can be taught to produce nice overtones at octave and fifth if their vowels are perfectly consistent. It's just a subtlety, but there you go.

    My question is whether bad vowel production has a measurable a deleterious effect on pitch.
  • incantuincantu
    Posts: 989
    As much as I can imagine myself saying something as silly as "all notes are sharp" (which becomes essentially meaningless), I can't agree with all of the above statements. Particularly that "all intervals in a tuned piano are flat." First of all, an interval cannot be "flat" but I'm guessing this was a way of saying "too narrow." But actually, major thirds are too wide on the piano compared to just intonation, not too narrow. Maybe that's why we hear that third as flat when it's sung. Maybe what you really need to do is sing a pure fifth which will make the third seem more "just." (Having said that, I have also worked with singers who sing the third so low that it is below a "just" third; but in these cases it seems to be a technical issue rather than an aural one.)
  • Liam
    Posts: 4,943
    One encounters certain conductors who have what might be a conceptual approach to vowels - for example, how to deal with the short i and long E sound - and others who have what seems to be an empirical approach. That is, the first group believe there is one solution to the vowel issue no matter what singers are in front of him or her, while the second group might have approaches that vary according to the problems the singers are presenting and capable of remedying. The first group is easier to follow, but in practice I suspect the second group is more on the money...
  • Donnaswan
    Posts: 585
    Your choir must, must must be 'in harmony' as to vowel sounds. To my mind the most important consideration- getting a uniform vowel sound, everything else follows. Of course, how you go about getting that is the question, and every conductor has his ways. In the end, there is not a right or wrong way, as long as you get a uniform sound- then your choir will be in tune.
    Donna
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,217
    Donna's right--it's the unification of vowel sounds which counts.

    Some choral directors (myself included) advocate thinking of the letter "h" following each (Latin) vowel. If that's done by the singers, the dipthongs (aaaa-EEE, eye-EEEEE, ho-YOU) disappear. Others (one children's chorus in Chicago, e.g.) manage to train the singers to sing the vowel "pure," and don't have to resort to the "h trick." I think that it's very difficult to re-train adults to the 'pure vowel' production, so I use the "h-trick."

    But there's more. The singers also have to have basic jaw mechanics correct, which is usually described (loosely) as almost slack-jawed (no tension, please) with the singer thinking of "pointing" the sound "to" a point slightly above the upper teeth. THIS gives the voice resonance inside the skull (mileage may vary according to the size of the Gift of Brains.)
  • Donnaswan
    Posts: 585
    dad29 Books have been written! LOL
    Donna
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    When you tune a piano to A-440 you then set all the 5ths slightly flat....no? So the fifth of every chord that is played is flat. Of course, the 4ths are then all sharp, and the thirds are wide, so I should have said all intervals on the piano are out of tune one way or another. And don't say that octaves are in tune because every piano requires them to be stretched to some degree because of inharmonicity...
  • mahrt
    Posts: 517
    The tuning system should be different for chant and for polyphony. For chant, a Pythagorean system works, where the whole steps are slightly wide, making the major third wide and the half step narrow. Fourths and fifths are perfect.

    For polyphony, some advocate "just intonation"--all intervals are tuned perfect by ear. I don't buy that, because the major third will be tuned acoustically, i.e., a little bit low, but that makes the leading tones a little bit low. So I have observed that my choir, which sings chant in something that approximates Pythagorean tuning, sings polyphony in a mix of Pythagorean and just intonation, tuning intervals according to where they lead. This means that intervals within a phrase may not be perfectly consonant, but rather contribute a sense of motion and direction to the counterpoint, and intervals at the conclusion of phrases are perfectly tuned, contributing a sense of repose.
  • incantuincantu
    Posts: 989
    When I say an interval cannot be flat (or for that matter, sharp) that is to say that an interval is the distance between two pitches. That distance can be described as wide or narrow (and then, only compared to some standard) but not as sharp or flat. A pitch that is a certain interval above or below a given pitch can be sharp or flat, but not the interval itself. I think Noel you mean to say that on a piano the note is a fifth above a given pitch is heard as flat. But you could just as easily say that a fifth below a given note is heard as sharp. Either way, the interval is narrow compared to a pure fifth.
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