Ears du jour

Yes, there is such a thing! It is a tribute to the ear's fragility that it is apparent when I listen to early music that the players, though on properly tuned instruments, are listening with contemporary ears. The difference is that period listening involves letting go of modern notation in favor of visceral definitions of in- and out-of tune, based not on "correctness" but on overtones.

This gets trained out of us, unless we are very lucky. Thanks to Viktor Zuckerkandl's "Sound and Symbol" I devised a way to identify the difference: Tonal Refraction. It is not theoretical; it is not fixed. It is entirely experiential: subject to change - in fact, inviting change in one's own perception of tone.

Oddly, the most convincing evidence of the difference is what is practiced by some far-out contemporary composers and musicians: The Del Sol String Quartet, for example. Its called "just intonation." Check it out. Get a sock or two knocked off.