Helmholtz pitch notation

Tonsymbole serve the designation and naming of pitches in a musical context.

While the physics describes as pitch frequencies in hertz units, so as the number of oscillations per second, uses the music letters, syllables, special characters and graphical symbols to identify a particular range of pitches from the frequency spectrum.

German accentuations

In German, in the course of music history, the use of the letters a, h, c, d, e, f and g for the seven naturals ( and one of her relatives chromatic ) has naturalized. Alterations of the naturals are identified by appending the syllable " -is" for high Alteration or " it " for low alteration. An unsystematic, historically exception is the deep alteration of the sound " h" is not called " hes ", but " b". The double tiefalterierte "h" but in turn means " heses ", not " better ".

Regarding the question whether individual sounds in German should be capitalized or small, there is disagreement. The Duden and other dictionaries allow both spellings. Considered linguistically and orthographically are nouns ( the F sharp, even if the article is not there ), which would speak for the upper case. Even in English, the sounds are very important ( see below). However, you meet in the German literature very often to the lower case.

The Tonbezeichnung (eg c ) indicates still no information about the absolute pitch, as it depends on the octave, in which the sound is. There is also an on Hermann von Helmholtz declining letters that identifies the octave by uppercase and lowercase letters as well as by appending indices, high or Tiefkommata or dashes:

With the sounds of the Subsubkontraoktave up to seven octave of the entire human hearing range is covered, which begins in the Subsubkontraoktave the infrasonic range and in the seven octave of the ultrasonic range.

The scientific and IT -compliant notation for sounds below the Subkontraoktave is not widespread, there have to be used for notes in the Subsubkontraoktave and deeper tones numbers with negative sign.

Note labels in other languages

In the Anglo - American world the master tones C, D, E, F, G, A, B. The noisy in German with "h" sound is called there so called "B". The German sound "b" in English is to say, however, "B flat". The alterations are formed by the addition of "sharp " and "flat", eg " C sharp " refers to the cis.

In the Romansh language region, the Solmisations syllables ut have (or do), re, mi, fa, sol, la and si enforced naming absolute pitch.

Notation

A graphical form of symbolic description of pitches and durations as well as other musical parameters is the musical notation.

Musical motifs of tone letters

German -speaking accentuations offer numerous ways to form words, names and abbreviations that can be used as musical motifs. The most widely used is BACH, which was used by Johann Sebastian Bach himself several times and was set to music by many composers after Bach as a tribute to him.

More:

  • A - B - E - G - G for Meta Abegg, the inspiration for Robert Schumann's Abegg Variations, Opus 1
  • A - B - H - F for Alban Berg and Hanna Fuchs- Robettin (A - B and H - F) used in Berg's Lyric Suite
  • A - It - C - H and As - C - H, used in Schumann's Carnaval. He was in love with Ernestine von Fricken out of town Asch.
  • A - F - F - E and Eb - C - H - A - F - E used Max Reger in his Violin Sonata in C Major, Op 72, against his former critics.
  • B - E - B - A or B - A - B - (to be Béla Bartók Béla Bartók and according to the Hungarian practice, the family name before the given name ) E for Béla Bartók
  • C - A - F - F - E - E, used by Carl Gottlieb Hering in his coffee canon.
  • C - A - G - E for John Cage, used by Pauline Oliveros and, in the composition CAGE DEAD, by Simon Jeffes of Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
  • C - H - A - A for Ch ( i) a (r ) = a = Clara Clara Schumann Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor
  • D - It - C - H Dmitri Shostakovich ( Shostakovich )
  • It - C - H - B - E - G for Arnold Schoenberg ( Schönberg)
  • It - F - B ( SFB) from the Sender Freies Berlin in the harmonious final cadence in E flat major - F major - B major used as an interval signal
  • F - A - E for " free but lonely " as used Johannes Brahms
  • F - It - C - H for Franz Schubert ( F. Schubert)
  • G - A - D - E For the Danish composer Niels Gade in the Album for the Young by Robert Schumann ( "Nordic Song ", with the subtitle " Greeting to G. " )
  • H - E - A - E - Es, used by Thomas Mann in his novel Doctor Faustus for " hetaera Esmeralda", the prostitute Esmeralda, with which his protagonist Leverkiihn admits.
Altered chord Infrasound Motif (music) BACH motif Homage Variations on the name "Abegg" Chiara Piano Concerto (Schumann) DSCH motif Cadence (music)
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