The problem is the proportion of tones one to another to produce "perfect" consonance is not consistent if you change the lower tone. If my lower tone is a C, to achieve perfect consonance with a G the pitch of the G will be slightly different than the pitch of a G will be if it is perfectly consonant with a lower D tone.
This isn't normally a problem for vocalists, obviously. They tend to adjust their sound to blend without even thinking about it. This is also true of good wind musicians. Players speak of "lipping" a tone, of shifting the "embouchure" (position of the mouth in relation to the mouthpiece) to make a subtle difference in the pitch. And of course standard string players can just slide a fingertip a hair one way or another to blend in.
However, for hammered or plucked instruments (bells, glockenspiel, piano, harpsichord, harp, etc.), this is not possible. This means that practically speaking, their "palette" of available tonalities would be limited to one base key with perfect tuning and at most three or four keys closely related to it. As you get farther away from the base key that the tuning of the instrument is perfect for, the less consonant/more dissonant its music would sound within itself. Needless to say, it's rather laborious to retune one of these instruments, if it's possible at all. And the thought of trying to adjust the tuning of a pipe organ can't even be seriously considered.
The limitations of this approach are pretty self-evident. Composers chafed at being limited to a handful of keys/tonalities.
A number of "temperament" systems were proposed over the years with different methods of adjusting pitch ratios and dropping certain keys from usage.
Eventually, however, the system that won out is the "Equal Temperament" system. It had been proposed in one form or another as far back as the early 1500s, but it didn't gain dominant status until about 1800 in Germany and about 1850 in France and Britain. In this system, the only truly perfect interval is the octave—A to A, B to B, etc. Between the two tones of an octave, the frequency spectrum is divided into twelve equal semitones (a/k/a half steps), each of which corresponds to one of the white and black keys of a piano in that octave.
The net result is that the non-octave intervals in equal temperament are never "perfect," but many of them are so close it's hard for even the human ear to detect the difference. The big thing is that all keys/tonalities are just a little bit off, instead of some of them being nearly perfect and some of them being rather dissonant. This opened up the full musical palette for composers, which made for the richness of the classical and romantic periods of music.
This was a very serious subject in musical circles of the 16xx era. Lots of debate (i.e., impassioned arguments) occurred over this.
Of course, even today, you will sometimes hear wind instrumentalists muttering that equal temperament is a folly, and we should go back to the true Pythagorean/just tunings. J
Pitch and tuning
Standard international pitch today is a' (the a above middle c) = 440 Hz. This was established in 1939 by an international conference under the sponsorship of the International Standards Association. (Precursor to ISO?)
Prior to that, the standard was a'=435 Hz, established by the Paris Academy in 1859 and ratified by a conference in Vienna in 1885.
Prior to that, there was no international standard. It was whatever the local musicians decided. Most probably, it was whatever the local pipe organ had been tuned to, as that would be the instrument that would be hardest to re-tune. It was not unknown for composers to have to transpose works if they took them to a different locale because the tuning in their new location was significantly off compared to their old location.
Historical evidence is that in the early 1700s, the closest thing to a standard was b' = to something around 422 Hz. 16xx probably was not too different. This means that the a' would probably have been around 370 Hz. This is a difference on the order of a full step. The down-time a' would be around the up-time g', maybe even lower.
Net effect = down-time musicians playing up-time music with local tuning values would generate music that was actually lower in pitch than the up-time performance of the same piece. This actually gives a break to sopranos, tenors, trumpeters, and anyone else who was performing in their personal upper register. A difference of a step is a huge difference. It would also explain why composers would sometimes produce copies of the same work in multiple keys, as the local organ might have a different pitch than the organ in the last place he was at, so to get the sound he wanted he'd have to change to a different key.
Why was the international move to raise the pitch? One suggestion is that they wanted a brighter sound.
What Does All This Mean?
Okay, we've talked about all this to get to this point: the music from the future is going to sound very different to 1632 ears. This is the part that is hardest for our generation to understand. I'm actually going to quote some words I wrote for one of my characters, Marla Linder, in the story "Suite for Four Hands," which was published in Grantville Gazette, volume 5. I can't think of a better way to describe what's what.
" There has always been a difference between the music done for art's sake, and the music done to please the common man. You know that's true. The music you create for patrons, and I include the church in that category, is different from the music you create on street corners and in taverns. It may be related—you know as well as I do that melodies from the street and the taverns have a way of sneaking into even the music written for the churches—but there is a definite difference in complexity between the two. The more complex the music grows, the smaller it seems the audience is who can truly appreciate it.
"As I said, this has pretty much always been the case, but until the early 1900s the music of the streets was more of an undercurrent in the stream of music. That changed with the invention of mechanical devices that could record music played in one place onto some kind of medium, such as wax or types of plastic—" They all nodded at the reference to the magic stuff that was so prevalent in Grantville. "—or even the CDs.
"What happened was once the average citizen could own a device that would play whatever music he wanted whenever he wanted it, he began buying the music he liked. That changed the way music was created and performed. By the 1970s, it was becoming difficult for many orchestras to exist, partly because people were buying different music than what the orchestras played, and partly because even the music the orchestras did play could be recorded, bought and played any time.
"The popular music, the outgrowth of the music of the streets, took many forms. Most people would like a few types. Very few people liked them all. But in almost every case, the popular musicians became like heroes, and it became a status symbol to people to have a lot of these recordings. The more you had, especially of rare or new or avant-garde musicians, the more status you had among your friends. By the time I was in high school, a ridiculously large amount of money was being spent every year by people all across our nation to purchase these recordings.
"The styles of music diverged for a while, but inevitably they began influencing each other again, both between different types of popular music and between the popular music and the art music."
Another conversational quote from the same source.
After they regained their composure, Friedrich said, "How can so many different styles have developed so quickly? Our music develops slowly, changes slowly. Why did theirs change so rapidly?"
"We've already talked about the access to mechanical and electrical systems to play music," Marla said as she walked back into the room. "Another factor, though, is the changes in the place and authority of the church in society. For most of its existence, the church has been a conservative institution. That can be a good thing, at times. However, it can also be a drawback, for conservative organizations tend to be very slow to change. Ultraconservative organizations actively resist change. Hence the boiling pot of Europe that Luther and Calvin have lit a fire under."
She moved to the stereo, and continued speaking wh
ile she searched for a CD. "One of the areas where the church exerted its control was in the arts. Musical forms changed very slowly over the years. But as a result of the changes that occurred beginning with Luther, the influence of the church—whether Roman, Lutheran or Reformed—over music began to ebb, and musical evolutions began to cycle faster. By the 1800s, musical generations were occurring on a level with human generations. By my lifetime, musical generations were occurring every five to ten years."
There you see the evolution of modern music described in a nutshell. Now to talk about what the down-timers would hear.
There are three factors that define what sounds "good" to people: using notes that fall within the harmonic series of the previous note, using notes that fit within the harmonic series of the chord in place at that moment of the music, or using notes and intervals that are acceptable within the cultural experience of the people. The first two do have some grounding in acoustics. The last is purely a factor of what the people have learned to be acceptable, and please do not underestimate it.
Singable melody carries with it implied harmony, created by the intervals between the notes of the melody line. Even if all you ever heard sung was the melody line, if you can hear the melody well enough to pitch-match and sing along with it, you gain a feeling for the key the song is in. It's an unconscious thing—most people don't even realize that it's happening. And in the street music of the 1632 era, changes of key during a song just weren't common, whether sung, played on a pennywhistle or played on a bagpipe. I won't say they didn't occur, but they weren't common.
As an example of something that would really affect the down-timers, let's look at the old standby, "Do, a Deer," from The Sound of Music. Even performed with only the melody, I think that song would drive most of the down-timers nuts. It seems so simple to us, but we grew up with it in the twentieth century. If you really listen to the melody, though, that song seems to shift keys about five or six times in the verse and chorus, and then it starts over and does it again. You don't have to be a trained musician to hear that, and it would just sound "weird" to them.
As another example, take the song "Maria" from the Broadway musical West Side Story, music by Leonard Bernstein . Down-timers would hate this song because of an interval in the melody that would never be used in melody writing at that time in either street or art music. The interval is an augmented fourth, basically from C to F#, also called a diminished fifth or a tri-tone. That is the single most dissonant interval in Western European music using what we would think of as normal instruments and scales. Nobody then would use it in melody writing. In fact, supposedly Bernstein intentionally used the interval just to prove that it could be used in a melody. It definitely caused a certain amount of furor in academia when he did.
Any down-timer who heard "Maria" would cringe. The professional musicians could tell you why–they actually referred to that interval as "diabolus in musica." The common people would just know that the song really sounded bad. And yet, by our standards, that's a pretty song. That's probably the most extreme example I can present, but it's not the only case.
Relatively minor changes in style can produce severe reactions in the public. Remember how Bob Dylan's career almost tanked when he picked up an electric guitar? In the same way, relatively small differences in the "sound" of up-time music would cause acceptance of it to be somewhat less than universal or fast.
Another issue would be syncopation, the playing of notes on the off-beat. Some of the art music of the time used syncopation, but it was narrowly defined to a certain style of syncopation, not the full gamut of syncopation used today.
The street music of 1632 is very simple. The up-time music that would come closest to matching it would be simple folk music (not the sophisticated Peter, Paul and Mary stuff), early country/hillbilly music not far removed from the Appalachian hill country folk songs, and hymns written before about 1920. There will be exceptions—the melodies of the Beatles songs "Michelle" and "Yesterday" would translate well, although the original harmonies might not.
A lot of music will make an easy transition. I intentionally picked Irish folk music for some of my characters to perform in the taverns for several reasons, one of which was that the people would accept it quickly. But a lot of songs that seem plain vanilla to us (cultural experience) are really going to sound weird to the down-timers, and it will take some time for them to become accepted. There is such a thing as cultural inertia. For some of the songs it may just be a matter of a year or so. Some of them will be years, some a generation or more. Dixieland, ragtime, jazz, heavy metal—anything with lots of dissonance in it is going to be on the long end of the scale. There might be an occasional exceptional character that stands out early on as liking one or more of those styles, but wide-spread acceptance will take a while.
The art music of 1632 is pre-Johann Sebastian Bach. This is a full generation before he was even born. It's pretty simple, comparatively speaking. Bach and Handel will seem avant-garde to them. Mozart and Beethoven will blow their doors off. Chopin will cause harpsichord players to freak out. Most everything written above applies to the art music, and more so.
One more quote, and then we'll move on. This is a 1958 quote from Igor Stravinsky, one of the most well known composers of the twentieth century.
"I am often asked if I would consent to conduct in the Soviet Union. For purely musical reasons I could not. Their orchestras do not perform the music of the three Viennese and myself, and they would be, I am sure, unable to cope with the simplest problems of rhythmic execution that we introduced to music fifty years ago. The style of my music would also be alien to them. These difficulties are not to be overcome in a few rehearsals; they require a twenty- or thirty-year tradition. I discovered something of the same situation in Germany at the end of the war. After so many years of Hitler in which my L'Histoire du Soldat, Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire, Berg's and Webern's music were banned, the musicians were unable for a long time to play the new music, though they have certainly more than made up for it since." (From Conversations with Igor Stravinsky, by Igor Stravinsky and Robert Plant, © 1958, 1959, University of California Press)
I will grant you that Stravinsky's music would be challenging to any musician, but the point he makes relates to and underlines what I've been saying above. Much of the up-time music will not be assimilated easily or quickly.
A Musical Yardstick
Some time back three members of the editorial board were polled to ask them to rate several modern pieces of music as to how they think they would be accepted by the down-timers in the year 1632. The scale was 1 = that's just noise to 10 = I like that. Below are the consolidated scores. It's a subjective analysis, but that in itself tends to prove the point that a lot of acceptability is in the ear of the hearer.
Edelweiss (from The Sound of Music) 9.5
Shady Grove 8.5
Blow the Man Down 8.0
The Gambler 7.5
The Rising of the Moon 7.5
Throw Mama from the Train (a kiss, a kiss) 7.5
Streets of Laredo 7.0
Boll Weevil 7.0
Long Black Veil 7.0
Swanee River 6.5
Bach's G minor Fugue 6.5
Amazing Grace (standard hymnal version) 6.5
Will the Circle Be Unbroken 6.5
Battle Hymn of the Republic 6.0
Give My Regards to Broadway 6.0
The theme song from The Brady Bunch 6.0
Hello, Dolly 5.5
All the Girls I've Loved Before 5.5
I Saw the Light 5.5
White Christmas 5.5
Blowing in the Wind 5.0
Some of the Mozart concerti? 5.0
16 Going on 17 (from The Sound of Music) 4.0
California Girls 4.0
Up a Lazy River 4.0
Alexander's Ragtime Band 3.5
Dixie 3.0
Putting on the Ritz 3.0
Goodbye Norma Jean 3.0
Hot
el California 3.0
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun 2.5
It Don't Mean a Thing if It Ain't Got That Swing 2.5
Rock Around the Clock 2.0
A Day in the Life 2.0
Blue Suede Shoes 2.0
Benny and the Jets 1.5
Maple Leaf Rag 1.5
Purple Rain 1.5
Maria (from West Side Story) 1.0
Musical Lexicon
(Note: much musical terminology is Italian in derivation)
Monophony—music characterized by a single melodic "voice" with no harmony. Best example is Gregorian chant.