When I saw Ax, Ma and Stoltzman playing at Obama's inauguration, I told my wife: "There's no way they're playing that live - it must be pre-recorded." She said "Why?" I said "Because it's freezing outside which will make the strings sharp and the clarinet flat, and the difference is far too much for them to compensate." And yes, it was pre-recorded. Sometimes even the best musicians have to fake it.
That's one example, there are many others. Jascha Heifetz would always play a few cents over the orchestra when playing concerti, as to have his sound be more in front of the orchestra. When Heifetz plays Bach, he always sounds out of tune to me. He's using the same sorts of intervals used in romantic era music, which just ain't right. And as noted previously, earlier tuning systems were almost invariably lower than modern pitch. Essentially, pitch is all over the place.
Joseph Spencer, my old boss who spent a lot of time in recording studios, pointed out that digital tuners revolutionized music, pop music specifically. And digital tuners can be adjusted for higher or lower pitches. My older tuner could be tuned to A = 445 or 435.
Early tuning systems (before equal temperament) can be spine tingling since we're not accustomed to the purity of the chords and intervals. Especially when the musicians (especially singers) use the ancient style with minimal vibrato. Incidentally, the increasing use of vibrato seems to be roughly coincident with the adoption of equal temperament. Perhaps the vibrato helps mask the slightly out-of-tune intervals.
If you listen to music recorded before sound on film, there's often minimal vibrato. The Capet Quartet is a good example. While equal temperament might be one cause for increased wobble, I suspect the high levels of wow and flutter once there was sound on film is another.
When I suggest that increased vibrato seems coincident with the adoption of equal temperament, I don't mean to imply that that slightly off 5ths and 3rds have beat frequencies we hear as vibrato. But that is possible. Consider A at 440. In ET, C will be 440*1.189=523.16. This is a minor 3rd, which should be 6:5 = 1.2:1, so the C should be 440*1.2=528. That's off by 5Hz which beats 5 times per second which is both audible and dissonant. [Incidentally, we are so used to this dissonance we don't notice until we listen to ancient music and hear the perfect 3rd in just temperament and experience the purity of what it should sound like.] Somebody could hear that beating and think it's a fast vibrato. However, what I really meant was that the musician hears this dissonance and either (A) bends his pitch to widen the interval and raise the C so it sounds pure, or adds (perhaps subconsciously) his own vibrato to mask the beats or dissonance.
There's a "sentimental" affect to the sort of vibrato of which we speak. Again, I think it's the wow & flutter heard via sound on film that creates this sound as a model. Interesting how the most recently discovered distortion becomes another effect for music. People got used to it, helping to fully open the doors to pure atonality. The Guarneri Quartet sound consisted of a lot of this sort of vibrato, giving off the sense that their music happened further back in time than the recording date of record.
I've done some recording. And I've run across several musicians who would notice 440 hz vs 432 hz in about 5 seconds. Un-erringly. How do I know? I've had some software glitches which resulted in 48 khz recordings playing back at 44.1 khz. That is almost exactly the same ratio as 440 vs 432 hz.
The difference may seem small, but many instruments designed for A=440 are not in tune with themselves at 432.
Most modern instruments are designed for A=440. The biggest problem I've had with tuning to something other than this (say outside the range of 438 to 442) is that intonation suffers overall. For example everyone can set their A to 444 but they'll be out of tune on other notes. Then someone in the group says, "let's re-tune our A", and they find to their surprise the A still sounds fine. So they keep playing and the intonation remains off and everyone wonders why.
Amen to that. It's hard enough to play a flute in tune with itself, since even under ideal conditions the tone hole positions are a compromise. Don't make it harder by making me tune it to a pitch it wasn't even designed to play.
