I can’t believe my ears!

University of Southampton Music students compare Temperaments (tuning methods) in favourite pieces by Chopin, Schumann & Liszt.

The University of Southampton Music Department’s beautiful new Bösendorfer will be tuned in the nineteenth-century way, in a ‘temperament’ invented by the polymath Thomas Young. Thomas helped to translate the Rosetta Stone. He discovered that rods and cones are the basis of colour vision, and his ‘Young’s Modulus’ is to this day the every-day business of engineers. In Young’s Temperament, every key sounds different. D major is festive, B minor gloomy, G major smoothly re-assuring, and E flat minor the stuff of nightmares.

The Turner Sims’ beloved Steinway will be tuned in the twentieth-century way. Every semitone is the same size, and every key sounds exactly the same. Even if you have perfect pitch and can tell the difference between F major and F sharp major without looking, the identical sizes of all the intervals means that there is no actual key-colour.

University of Southampton Music students will play well-loved pieces by Chopin, Schumann & Liszt on both pianos, one after the other. Come and hear the difference for yourself.

Part of the Artistic Temperaments Keyboard Festival