Kevin Sutton wrote:

>...  I know dozens of professional condutors, and indeed very few of us
>have perfect pitch.  Many of us have a highly developed relative pitch,
>but not perfect.

Jeff Kahane, who does, once ticked off, on a Compuserve Forum, a list
of the major conductors who do have/had perfect pitch, illustrating how
important that seems to be relative to the everyday head-job in a major
orchestra where one has to learn so many scores so quickly, often on
airplanes.

I know that in our own organization both Ozawa and the choral director
had it, and 30% of the chorus also.  There is some kind of correlation.
Bernstein, Mehta, Previn, but I don't remember the other names.  And, of
course you can do it with relative pitch.  The other makes it less work,
at least for most.

>Good reading skills do not come from the ability to hear pitches in one's
>head.

Did I say "only"? I did mention "musical training" as an "AND" condition in
boolean logic.  The pitches are the first thing you see and these help FORM
the harmonic progressions, and if you hear the pitches without effort and
read forward (as when listening to someone play them, with the help of that
musical training), then the harmonic values will take care of themselves.
I can't imagine trying to read a score without musical training.

>Much of the common practice music was written to rather strict rules of
>harmony and form.  Once you are familiar with these structures, then you
>start to know how Mozart (for example) "goes".

Mozart knew how he went and the scholars figured out what rules he was
following in his inner being.  One can still know how it goes if they
are not exactly you with your particular combination of training.

>After this familiarity becomes second nature you instantly recognize
>melodic and harmonic gestures in the music and sing or play them
>automatically.

Well, yes.

Andrys in Berkeley
http://www.andrys.com/books.html
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