Context-dependent intonation variants of melodic intervals

Abstract

Owing to the ear’s fine sensitivity to pitch differences, listeners can detect very subtle deviations from the exact pitch in violin playing and can judge them as “mistunings” (Fyk, 1989). Nevertheless, even in excellent recordings of violin playing the same melodic intervals are played with a surprisingly large range of values, often exceeding a quartertone and in extreme cases reaching 100 cents (Garbuzov, 1948). Very large dispersion was also shown in the free tuning of separate melodic intervals (Moran and Pratt, 1926; Rakowski and Miskiewicz, 1985). To explain this apparent discrepancy it was assumed that in Western music, within rather broad elementary units of musical intonation (“phonemes of musical pitch”) there are systematic deviations that may be compared to allophones (Rakowski, 1990; see also Burns and Ward, 1982). These deviations, or “intonation variants”, are mostly unconscious though perceptually detectable. In the joint statistical description of all interval sizes within a single piece of music provided by Garbuzov (1948), or in repeated context-free tunings of a given interval (Rakowski and Miskiewicz, 1985) the use of various intonation variants by the subjects was not controlled; therefore the general dispersion was very large. However, in a real musical situation, the use of a given variant is imposed by the musical context, and dispersion is smaller (Rakowski, 1990).