‘Am I in Tune?’ – A spiritual Intermezzo

At all events, August Manns did a great service by consistently pressing for the standard pitch of 440 cycles per second, and consequently my pegs, as well as my strings, were glad not to be fiddled with so often!

However, I believe there is a profound and spiritual aspect to the whole matter of pitch and tuning. It could be said that the human quest for spiritual growth and enlightenment should include a regular examination of mind and heart, to check if one’s life is fully ‘in tune’ or not.   I think human failings and sinfulness could be described metaphorically as being those things in our lives which are ‘out-of-tune’. If my four strings are ‘out of tune’ with each other – even to the tiniest degree – my life is intolerable, indeed painful. Nothing sounds right, let alone good. However, when all my strings are sounding in the balanced ratio of a perfect fifth interval with each other, I feel I am a ‘whole’ instrument, a ‘whole musical “person”’.  I am, therefore, grateful when my player checks this important detail at frequent intervals.

My numerous owners and players over the years have varied enormously in this.  Also, it’s worth mentioning that the quality of all four strings has improved beyond measure in my lifetime.  Plain stretched sheep-gut for the G, D & A strings has been replaced with a variety of metal and aluminium covering, and various metal labour-saving devices have been introduced to insert into my tail-piece, in order that tuning can be adjusted without the need to overwork the pegs in my scroll.  Some of my players have been meticulous, almost obsessive, in keeping me balanced and in tune, but others have been rather slack. And many factors affect the balance of my sound, including atmospheric conditions, changes in temperature, humidity, etc – without having to negotiate around different pitch levels!

And then in recent days, the musical world has witnessed a digital revolution!  I can now be tuned with absolute precision by the use of computerised technology. Most present-day music making is digitally produced and performed.  This is amazing, but I can’t help thinking back to that experience in 1827 in Vienna, when Beethoven played me a whole semitone flat.  With such serious hearing loss, what would he have thought about digital tuning? And something else comes to mind – musicians blessed (or cursed?) with ‘absolute’ or ‘perfect pitch’ are said to suffer physical pain when pitch sounds are in the slightest degree ‘out of tune’.

With all this, my years of experience tell me that there is a delicate matter to be considered here, and it relates to a tonal balance between my violin body and the body of my player. When the player is wholly in tune with her/himself, then the well-tuned vibrations of our bodies have the increased potential to find new resonance.  Together we can then express a true sound. Tuning is so much more than technical accuracy or precision!

The times of my most satisfying performances have been when my player has been fully in tune with him/herself, focussed on our unity and undistracted by peripheral attractions or worries, entering into the music in total harmony with our shared ‘being’. My friend Friedrich Schleiermacher immediately comes to mind here! Maybe Christ being in harmony with God, the world and his total self-giving on the Cross, helps us to know how music can become

‘perfect’.

In a few years from now, Friedrich Nietzsche, a famous German, will explain that he ‘philosophised with a hammer, like a tuning fork’!  Could, then, the Cross of Christ be like a tuning fork?  When it strikes our bodies, are we able to tune our lives and (heart)strings, so that a truly resonant sound-world may be made manifested.

We shall come across Nietzsche and his ‘tuning fork’ again, at the turn of the 20^th Century

So, whoever we are – instrumental body, human body, musical or otherwise – keep ‘in tune’ and ‘practice makes perfect’!