Many people strive to join the art of music, if not at a professional level, then at least at an amateur level. However, this cannot be done without hearing. Absolute refers to one of several types musical abilities and causes a lot of controversy about the nature of its formation. Is it possible to develop it? Let's try to figure it out.

General and special abilities

General abilities, without which it is impossible to even begin music lessons, are musical memory and healthy psychomotor skills. Musical memory refers to several types of memory that allow one to remember and reproduce in one form or another. musical works- by ear or visually remembering the location of notes on the keyboard, visually “photographing” the musical score, etc.

The core of musicality also consists of:

• modal sense that allows a person to distinguish emotional coloring music and its harmony;
• musical-auditory ideas about the pitch of sounds, the nature of their reproduction, the order of movement (this also includes the ability to reproduce what is heard by ear);
• perception of rhythm and the ability to work in a given rhythmic pattern.

Special abilities include those necessary for a specific performing activity (for example, a violinist has a number of requirements that are different from the requirements for a vocalist or pianist), as well as abilities necessary for the implementation of composing activities.

General and special abilities are not limited to the above components; moreover, the boundaries between these two groups are not entirely clear.

Types of musical hearing

Musical auditory perceptions are also called musical hearing. There are several varieties of it:

1. External (perception of music in real time) and internal (ability to reproduce music in the imagination).
2. Absolute (the ability to absolutely accurately recognize and reproduce individual sounds and melodies) and relative (the ability to build a melody or scale based on modal connections and harmony).
3. Harmonic (perception of multi-voice chords and parts) and melodic (perception of single-voice melodies).

What is absolute musical ear?

In turn, absolute ear for music divided into 2 categories: passive and active. Passive is when a person can accurately name the pitch of the sound being played, recognize the chord being played, or even name the notes that make up the melody. Well-developed active absolute pitch allows a person to accurately reproduce a given melody, scale or chord.

Absolute musical ear, in theory, refers to general musical abilities, because musical-auditory perceptions are precisely in this category. However, researchers are engaged in heated discussions about this classification.

Firstly, to classify absolute pitch as general abilities it would be wrong, because for any kind musical activity Relative hearing is more important - the ability to build relative modal connections (this is what musicality is understood as). Absolute pitch is a unique phenomenon. However, its presence does not indicate a person’s ability to understand music, but rather indicates good auditory memory, which accurately records musical information. Therefore, some researchers argue that absolute musical ear is a special ability. Again, it has not yet been established whether this ability is innate or acquired.

How to take a musical ear test

A test for the presence of musical ear is taken by students before enrolling in a music school, students before enrolling in music school etc. For people planning to play music professionally, such checks are common. However, in order to turn music into your hobby, you also need to make sure you have the ability. How to test your musical hearing at home?

This does not require sophisticated methods - just complete a few simple tasks with the help of a partner.

Task No. 1

It is advisable for the person taking the test to stand with their back to the instrument. Your partner must play a random note on the keyboard. The subject is given a couple of seconds to remember its sound. Then the assistant must play the notes one after another, and the subject must recognize among them the note that he holds in memory. The test should be repeated several times.

Task No. 2

If the person taking the test knows the name of the notes, then you can try the same technique: a partner plays an arbitrary note - the test subject voices its name.

Task No. 3

An ear for music also implies a good perception of rhythm. The assistant should use a pencil to tap on hard surface a certain rhythmic pattern that will last 5-7 seconds. The subject must repeat it exactly.

You may not be able to complete the musical ear test thoroughly the first time - this is normal even for people who have hearing. But if, after repeated repetitions, the number of correct answers is less than 20-30%, then, most likely, the ear for music is absent or very poorly developed.

How to develop absolute ear for music

Since absolute musical ear belongs to a still poorly studied area of ​​human abilities, if you really want to, you can still try to develop it: even if the test was passed unsatisfactorily, this is not a guarantee that the person has no inclinations at all. Performing systematic exercises to develop hearing can finally clarify the situation: confirm or refute the result of the first listening.

Exercises for the development of absolute musical ear

When developing an ear for music, you should choose the simplest exercises to begin with. When they are mastered, you can complicate the tasks. An assistant will be needed for the training.

Exercise No. 1

The exercise as a whole repeats exercise No. 1 from the musical ear test. The only difference is that this time, when the student makes a mistake, he needs to be told the correct answer and allowed to remember the sound of the note again, as well as its name (if he knows Pedagogical research has shown that telling the correct answer improves the results of further exercises by 25- 30%.

Exercise No. 2

When the previous exercise is mastered, it is worth moving on to a more complex option - musical dictation. For him it is necessary to take the most a simple melody- from a textbook for the 1st grade of a music school.

For the first dictation, the partner must slowly, observing the time signature and all pauses, play only a few bars, and the subject must write down the melody with notes by ear. You can increase the melody, try to write more complex dictations. Checking and working on errors is a mandatory component of this exercise.

Conclusion

A musical ear test can tell you a lot, but not everything. Some subjects worry too much and this prevents them from performing to their full potential.

However, if you decide to develop an ear for music, you need to understand that performing exercises should become, if not a daily activity, then carried out at least 3-4 times a week. With unsystematic exercises, it will be difficult to achieve results, and in some cases you will have to wait years for them. Developing an absolute ear for music is not an easy task; you need to be patient.

Surely many have heard the expression “absolute pitch”. In everyday life it is often attributed to people who are well versed in music, musical notation with extraordinary vocal abilities. However, being a highly skilled musician does not automatically mean you have perfect pitch. Moreover, only a few percent of the world's population can boast of this gift.

Mysterious phenomenon

Absolute ear for music is a rare phenomenon whose status is difficult to even determine. Is it the result of the action of certain natural factors or a physiological (hereditary) feature? The result of a unique personality development or a consequence of the influence of the social environment (family, society)? Or a complex combination of all factors? This mystery, even after centuries of study, is shrouded in darkness.

Presumably, most babies have this gift, but quickly enough it is “overshadowed” by other skills that are more important for survival. The main question, thanks to which an element of mystery arises, is the following: why in the same environment of upbringing, under the same conditions for musical development, one of the children develops absolute pitch, and the other does not?

Statistics

Over the years of in-depth research, scientists have accumulated rich statistical material. It turned out that absolute pitch is formed exclusively in childhood, moreover, precisely in preschool, during the period of dominance of involuntary acquisition of skills. This fact is unanimously confirmed by all researchers of absolute pitch. At the same time, the formation of a rare skill requires quality mandatory condition presence of a child in the family musical instrument, whose pitch is fixed. For example, keyboards, a number of wind instruments (accordion, accordion) and others. The reasons for this, presumably, lie not so much in the field of psychology of human abilities, but in the psychology of individual differences (differential psychology).

Absolute musical ear steadily retains its status as a phenomenon as an outstanding, exceptional phenomenon in a certain respect. This is due to its relatively low prevalence. According to researchers, 6-7% of professional musicians and no more than 1% of all music listeners have absolute pitch.

Definition

Absolute pitch is the ability of people to determine “by ear” the absolute height of sounds. Musicians with this gift remember the absolute pitch scale of the 12-semitone octave scale. They are able to accurately determine the pitch of any sound without outside help. In turn, absolute pitch is divided into:

• Passive - the ability to match the pitch of an audible sound.
• Active - the ability to reproduce a given sound with the voice (the owners of “active hearing” are an absolute minority).

There is also the concept of relative hearing - not an innate, but a learned skill, when people are able to correctly determine the pitch of a sound using “cues” (a comparison object, such as a tuning fork).

Development of absolute pitch: pros and cons

For more than a century, there has been debate about whether this rare natural ability can be developed and trained. Theoretically, this is possible, because under the influence of some factors it is formed in children. However, critics of teaching methods argue that there is no mass “influx” of musicians trained in absolute musical ear.

IN different times different people Methods for artificially acquiring absolute pitch were invented, but they were not widely used in practice for a very simple reason: they were not in demand among professional musicians. According to the general opinion, absolute pitch, although it significantly facilitates the implementation of musical activity, does not guarantee its success, and sometimes even complicates it. In addition, numerous reliable facts indicating that not all famous musicians had absolute pitch confirm the thesis that this ability is not obligatory or decisive.

Moral aspect

And yet, the problem of absolute pitch claims to be an eternal one, since it consists in dividing all participants in the musical community into two “camps”: people who have the gift and those who do not. This confrontation cannot be avoided.

In other words, the possession of absolute pitch is not a matter of conscious choice, but of some kind of “blessing from above.” At first glance, people with relative hearing seem to be disadvantaged: in comparison with “absolute players,” they need the help of a tuning fork or any other source of sound standards. In addition, when performing one or another operation related to determining the pitch of sounds, “absolute speakers” demonstrate unconditional superiority, which cannot but affect the self-esteem of those with relative hearing.

The most striking consequence of this situation is the formation of a unique complex of professional inferiority in persons with relative hearing. This happens despite the widespread assertion that highly developed relative hearing is quite adequate, and sometimes even more effective, when performing musical activities.

Scientific approach

Musical hearing today is considered differentiated in the following gradation of levels: melodic, harmonic, tonal, polytonal, modal, internal, orchestral, polyphonic, rhythmic, physical (natural), singing-intonation, subtle, acute, absolute, choral, operatic, ballet, dramatic. , stylistic, polystylistic, poetic, ethnic and multiethnic (absolute pitch).

It is possessed by composers, conductors, folklorists, the first violinist of an orchestra, arrangers, piano and organ tuners. Many researchers agree that absolute musical ear is a product concentrated on the basis of versatile natural phenomena, human genetics. It should be developed by capturing the voices of nature, birdsong, animal cries and even man-made (industrial) sounds.

How to develop absolute pitch

Whether it is possible to develop 100% hearing through training is a controversial issue. Usually people who achieve good results are called owners of pseudo-absolute pitch. It is advisable to develop talent in preschool children if they are capable of music. It has been proven that the most favorable time for a full perception of music is childhood, when the family learns the basics from the parents. musical culture, the ability to perceive, understand, feel, and experience musical images is cultivated.

Models of development of absolute pitch

Several development models are practiced in Russia. They are based on two principles for controlling intonation and hearing:

• oral (by text);
• associative (by notes).

The process of mastering comes down to the fact that at each lesson the entire scale with words is sung, then each student sings it during breaks, on the way home, after completing homework, at your leisure. He has it constantly in his head. When basically the text of the model is fixed in memory, which is not difficult by analogy with poetic texts songs, the text is sung broken down in the most various options. In the future, the key should be changed and try to sing the text in a new key, as a result of which the student begins to operate and modulate in any key.

Regular singing exercises develop an internal ear for music. The student begins to hear and determine what sound is being made - mi, sol, fa, la, etc. By analogy with what composers, folklorists, ethnographers, and conductors with absolute pitch have learned.

History lessons

What can a person with perfect pitch do? There is a famous incident in history that happened to the great L. Beethoven. It so happened that his physical hearing disappeared while conducting a piece at a concert, but his absolute, internal musical ear helped, helping the composer to conduct symphony orchestra(310 participating musicians).

Physical deafness did not prevent another opera composer - N. S. Dagirov (the operas “Aigazi”, “Irchi-Cossack”, in collaboration with G. A. Gasanov “Khochbar”, the ballet “PartuPatima”), who had not heard the production of his monumental works, but felt and perceived them with inner absolute pitch. With the loss of the physical, the inner hearing does not disappear. A person with absolute pitch will be able to syntonize quite accurately, display, and beat out the rhythm closest to what was heard.

Conclusion

Seeing, remembering, recording, learning to catch and hear the music living around us is the goal and task of the model for the development of absolute pitch, first in preschool, then in school upbringing and education. The development of musical hearing into an absolute one leads to a differentiated perception of the timbres-voices of folk, symphonic, jazz and other groups. After all, the main goal of human society on Earth is to study and improve the surrounding life in space and time on a new turn of the spiral of evolution.

D. K. Kirnarskaya

Absolute pitch

Possessors of absolute pitch, or, as musicians call them, absolutists , cause white envy among many. Ordinary people with good relative hearing recognize the pitch of sounds. compare them: if you do not give them a standard for comparison, then they will not be able to name a given sound, which any absolute student can easily do. The essence of this ability has not been fully revealed, and the most common version comes down to the fact that for the owner of absolute pitch, each sound has the same definite face as timbre: as easily as ordinary people recognize by the voice of their relatives and friends, distinguishing timbres, absolutists “recognize” everyone by sight separate sound.

It is likely that absolute pitch is a kind of “super-timbre” hearing, when the discrimination of timbres is so subtle that it affects each individual sound, which is always a little thinner and lighter than the neighboring sound, if it is higher, and also barely noticeably “darker” than the neighboring sound , if below it. A group of American psychologists led by Gary Krammer experimented with absolute musicians, non-absolute musicians and non-musicians. The subjects were asked to distinguish the timbres of different instruments. All people recognize timbres very well, so it is not surprising that all subjects coped with the task perfectly. But the absolute students answered much more confidently and quickly than their musician or non-musician colleagues. This means that absolute pitch includes a timbre element or even entirely, as many psychologists believe, is an ultra-fine branch of timbre hearing. Some introspection by musicians supports the “timbre version” of the origin of absolute pitch. Composer Taneyev recalled: “The note for me had a very special sound character. I recognized her as quickly and freely by this certain character of her sound, as we immediately recognize a familiar person by sight. The note D already seemed to have a completely different, also quite definite physiognomy, by which I instantly recognized and named it. And so on for all the other notes.”

The second popular version regarding the nature of absolute pitch emphasizes not the moment of timbre sensation, but the moment of supermemory on musical height. It is known that ordinary person can remember the pitch of a given sound for one and a half minutes - after a minute and a half, he can sing this sound or recognize this sound among other sounds. Musicians have a stronger memory for musical pitch - they can produce a sound eight minutes after hearing it. Absolute people remember the pitch of sounds indefinitely. Psychologist Daniel Levitin believes that absolute pitch is simply long-term memory.

Absolute pitch can be active or passive. Passive hearing allows you to recognize and name the pitch of a sound, but if such an absolute student is asked to “sing the note F,” he is unlikely to sing it instantly and accurately. The owner of active absolute pitch will do this without difficulty, not to mention the fact that he will easily recognize any sound. In discussing the nature of active absolute pitch and passive absolute pitch, researchers find room for both timbral and pitch versions of its origin. Many people believe that passive recognition of sounds is based on timbre absolute pitch, and the ability to actively reproduce them is based on pitch pitch. The question about the nature of absolute pitch still remains open, but no matter what absolute pitchers memorize - timbre, pitch, or both, they are extremely rare; only one in a thousand people has absolute pitch.

Professional musicians while studying at music schools, schools and conservatories constantly perform a lot of auditory exercises: they write musical dictations, sing from notes, guess chord sequences by ear. During the work of a conductor, choirmaster, singer, and in a wide variety of musical activities, hearing makes a lot easier and often serves as a convenient aid. Colleagues of happy absolutes sometimes set out to acquire absolute pitch, to develop it, even if they do not naturally have absolute pitch. Over the course of many hours of training, fanatics eventually develop the coveted absolute pitch and use it for some time, at least in a passive form. But as soon as they stop training, the absolute pitch they had acquired disappears without a trace - the skills acquired with such difficulty turn out to be very ephemeral and fragile.

Infants, who are already prone to manifestations of absolute pitch, can learn it even in an active form. Psychologists Kessen, Levine and Wendrich asked mothers of three-month-old babies to instill in them a special love for the note “F” of the first octave. This note is convenient for a child's voice, and when babies hummed on their note, mothers had to remind them of “F” every time, as if to suggest this particular pitch of sound. After forty days of training, twenty-three infants, participants in the experiment, hooted in unison on the note “F” - they managed to remember exactly this pitch and they no longer strayed from it. After some time, when the meaning of this special love for “F” was not cleared up, and the mothers stopped endlessly reminding this particular note, the babies switched to their usual humming. This is how I finished my short life barely breaking through absolute pitch. From many similar trials and errors with both infants and adults and children, researchers have made a preliminary conclusion about the inability of true, durable and not requiring additional work active absolute pitch. The reason for all sorts of fiascoes in attempts to achieve absolute pitch is explained by its genetic origin, which has been confirmed many times.

Neuropsychologists also believe that absolute pitch is an innate and genetically determined quality. A group of neuropsychologists led by Gottfried Schlaug focused on research on the left hemisphere of the planum temporale, which is slightly enlarged in all people compared to the corresponding part of the right hemisphere. This department is in charge of sound discrimination, including the discrimination of phonemes, and as already mentioned, some increase in this brain adaptation of the “human speaker” was formed in chimpanzees 8 million years ago. However, upon closer inspection, it turned out that absolute musicians have even more planum temporale than all the others. Homo sapiens, and even more than non-absolute musicians. “The results of the study show,” the authors write, “that outstanding musical ability is associated with exaggerated left-hemisphere asymmetry in the regions of the brain that support musical functions.”

Judging by the data of neuropsychologists and geneticists, absolute pitch as an ultra-high ability of sound discrimination and auditory memory is not cultivated or developed, but is bestowed from above. “Abandon hope, everyone who enters here!” It should have been written not on the gates of hell, but in the solfeggio class of especially zealous teachers who captivate gullible students with promises of developing their absolute pitch. However, more important question is different: is this gift of fate necessary for a musician, is absolute pitch such a valuable quality that it is difficult for a musician to do without? Since absolute pitch has attracted public attention, many almost anecdotal stories have been collected about it, telling about the incredible auditory capabilities of humans. But these quasi-anecdotes do not bring absolute pitch closer to music, but move it away from it, strengthening doubts about its usefulness as a purely musical quality, and not a curiosity of nature, which has a very indirect relationship to the art of music.

Absolute hearing works in automatic mode, recording everything that happens. The dentist of the absolute pianist Miss Sauer distracted her from the unpleasant sensations by asking questions about what note the drill was humming. Just like young Mozart, who knew how to name what sound a glass filled with water made, what note a clock ticked and doors creaked, Miss Sauer distinguished the pitch of all sounds in general. One day, while practicing a piece, she heard uninvited accompaniment in the form of the sounds of a neighbor's lawnmower, which was buzzing on the note “salt.” From now on, every time Miss Sauer performed this ill-fated piece, the sound of a lawnmower on the same note awakened in her mind, and the concert piece was irrevocably ruined. Miss Sower's colleague, the Rev. Sir Frederick Ousley, Professor of Music at Oxford University, also had legendary perfect pitch. At the age of five, he told his mother: “Just think, our dad blows his nose on “fa.” At any age, he could determine that thunder rumbles on “g” and the wind blows on “d”. At the age of eight, listening to Mozart's famous G minor symphony on a hot summer day, young Sir Frederick claimed that in fact he was not hearing G minor at all, but A flat minor, located a semitone higher. It turned out that the boy was right: the instruments became so hot from the heat that their tuning increased somewhat.

Says a lot about ancient origin absolute pitch, even more ancient than human speech. People sing and play the same melodies at different pitches; the same music often sounds either higher or lower. IN musical creativity relative hearing dominates, for which it is not the absolute height that is important music performed, and sound relations. It’s not the same with birds: they sing their “music” at the same pitch, remembering not so much bird melodies as the absolute height of the sounds included in them. This set of sounds is a sign for them, a signal, but not an artistic message. Dolphins do the same thing, emitting sounds of a certain pitch, where each frequency acts as a certain sign-signal. Animals forced to communicate over long distances use sound frequency as its most stable characteristic, not subject to distortion. Since ancient times, the frequency of sound vibrations has transmitted information in storms, snow, and rain, cutting through forests and oceans and overcoming all sound interference. In some species of animals, absolute pitch has thus been formed, capable of distinguishing and using several common frequencies.

The works of the Englishman Sargent shed light on many phenomena associated with absolute pitch. He claims that almost every person could become an absolute master if he started playing music in early childhood. His survey of one and a half thousand members of the English Society of Musicians shows that there is a certain connection between the start time music lessons and the possession of absolute pitch. Absolute pitch is dying out due to the fact that the same music, when heard in different keys, is perceived as practically the same; If this phenomenon, which musicians call "transposition", did not exist, then absolute pitch could be preserved. To assume this would, however, be a complete fantasy - singing as the basis of music-making could not live without the performance of the same melodies by soprano, bass, and tenor. All the data - both the phenomena of absolute pitch in animals (musicians sometimes call absolute pitch "canine pitch"), and the ease with which infants perceive the absolute pitch of sounds - makes us think that absolute pitch is not at all the highest achievement of human hearing, as is sometimes believed, but on the contrary , an auditory rudiment, a vanishing shadow of the evolutionary process, a trace of the auditory strategy of our distant ancestors. In ontogenesis, in child development, reflecting phylogeny, historical development, one can clearly see how absolute pitch, having barely emerged, dies off without receiving practical reinforcement: it is not necessary either in music or in speech, and being unclaimed, this rudiment quietly dies away as it once disappeared from people animal tail.

Among the advantages of absolute musicians is often the so-called “color hearing,” when musical tonalities seem to the perceiver to be colored, and persistently evoke certain color associations in memory. Rimsky-Korsakov considered the key of E major to be “blue, sapphire, brilliant, night, dark azure” thanks to the advice of fellow composers. Glinka wrote the chorus “The darkness of the night lies in the field” in this key, and Mendelssohn used this key for the overture “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and for the famous “Nocturne”. How could one avoid “night and dark azure” associations? Beethoven used F major as the basis for the “Pastoral” symphony, associated with the life of innocent shepherds and peasants in the lap of nature, and this tonality in the composer’s community began to naturally gravitate toward green. Rimsky-Korsakov and Wagner associated E-flat major with water - the first with “Blue Ocean-Sea”, and the second with “Das Rheingold”, although Rimsky-Korsakov could boast of absolute pitch, and Wagner did not. This further strengthens the idea that “color hearing” is a historical and cultural phenomenon, not related to absolute pitch. Scriabin also gravitated towards color associations of tonalities, but like Wagner he did not have absolute pitch.

Comparing absolute musicians with non-absolute musicians emphasizes their fundamental equality in the main thing: both hear and record sound relationships and remember the pitch of sounds, but use different strategies - where the absolute player does not think and does not compare, acting instantly, there the non-absoluteist achieves the same thing with minimal effort, but with the same result. Except in cases where it is necessary to tune an instrument with an accuracy of a few hertz or to recognize a false sound. So is it worth envying absolute listeners, and how to interpret this gift of nature, knowing about its rudimentary origin, as well as the fact that some great composers, including Tchaikovsky and Wagner with Scriabin, did without absolute pitch.

The very phrase “absolute pitch” suggests something perfect, highest, unattainable. This name reflects public reverence for absolute pitch, if only because of its very low prevalence. The very fact of possessing absolute pitch already suggests an extremely high level of musicality. However, even an approximate review of the facts and views of experts forces us to abandon such reverence. “Perfect pitch is not a panacea,” writes Ms. Sauer, who can recognize the pitch of drills and lawn mowers. – It is only what you can do with it and how you can use it. One does not automatically follow from the other.”

A few statistics go along with these chilling tirades. If the total number of absolutists in the world is about 3%, among students at conservatories in Europe and America there are already 8%, then among Japanese music students there are already 70% absolutists, it is likely that oriental languages ​​are genetically closer to tonal languages, and the auditory capabilities of Asians are generally higher. Isn’t that why it’s complicated? classical music Europe so quickly gained popularity in Far East, that the auditory resources of these peoples are extremely large compared to Europeans? It is easy for them to perceive the global sound structures of sonatas and symphonies, since their hearing is very perfect. However, the percentage of outstanding musicians among Asians is by no means greater than among Europeans. All over the world, quite ordinary musicians, and simply piano tuners, and even people who do not love music at all and are not interested in it, have perfect pitch. “Having absolute pitch in no way makes you a good musician,” writes one of the absoluteists, professor of solfeggio class at DePaul American University, Dr. Atovsky. – This does not mean that you understand musical relationships, it does not indicate a sense of rhythm, it simply means that you have absolute pitch. A lot of people think it means much more than that."

At the same time, among outstanding musicians the number of absolutes is very large. On the tops musical Olympus at the height of Mozart-Bach-Debussy and the like, non-absolute pitch is a great exception. The same can be said about outstanding performers of the rank of Richter-Stern-Rostropovich. In a special study about outstanding cellists, it was noted that 70% of them are absolute players. There is a certain discrepancy: on the one hand, absolute pitch and musical talent are clearly connected, and among the geniuses of music, a non-absolute person is as rare as a white musician among the black titans of jazz. At the same time, absolute pitch does not guarantee even passable musical abilities: possessing absolute pitch, apart from the absolute pleasure of recognizing the door of one’s home by its unique creaking, does not promise any other pleasures.

Even a superficial analysis of the hearing capabilities of the greats can bring some clarity to the mythology of absolute pitch. “When I was two and a half years old,” recalls the composer Saint-Saëns, “I found myself in front of a small piano that had not been opened for several years. Instead of knocking randomly, as children usually do, I fingered one key after another and did not release it until its sound died out completely. My grandmother explained to me the names of the notes and invited a tuner to put the piano in order. During this operation I was in the next room and amazed everyone by calling out the notes as they sounded under the tuner's hand. All these details are known to me not from hearsay, since I myself remember them perfectly.” What is surprising in this description is not that absolute pitch appeared so early - it always awakens early; It’s not surprising that the child so confidently named all the sounds after hearing them only once - this is absolute pitch. The love for music that arose early in a child was amazing, when he listened to the sounds with such attention, with such unprecedented interest, perceiving the piano as his interlocutor, who must be listened to, and not as a toy that must be beaten so that it responds with offended strumming.

Absolute pitch is rudimentary in its origin, it is an atavism, but among gifted musicians, on the one hand, and among ordinary “tuners,” on the other hand, it is preserved according to various reasons. Outstanding musicians are gifted in auditory terms not only with absolute pitch; their overall high musicality, their sensitivity to the meaningfulness of sound enhances all sound-distinguishing abilities, including absolute pitch. It does not die out in the consciousness of an outstanding musician, because it is included in the context of other auditory data, among which there is necessarily excellent relative pitch: an outstanding musician equally freely uses absolute pitch and non-absolute pitch, if necessary.

Absolutists, who can be conditionally called “tuners,” are essentially non-musicians. Their absolute pitch is just a rudiment, preserved as a curiosity of nature. Sometimes in a family of musicians this rudiment is delayed because the child is overloaded with sound impressions, his hearing aid works in enhanced mode. In addition, children of musicians have a hereditary tendency to preserve absolute pitch. However, in all similar cases the tendency to retain absolute pitch does not come from within consciousness, from within awakening musicality, and as a result, dead absolute pitch arises, which can push one to choose a musical profession - the recognized fetishism of the phrase “absolute pitch” will play its treacherous role here. The apparent ease of mastering the basics of the profession will obscure the bitter truth from such a “pseudo-talent”: nature did not endow him with a real creative gift, but only a surrogate in the form of absolute pitch.

Even if absolute pitch and its preservation are caused by internal reasons, and the child is indeed endowed with an excellent ear for intonation, a good sense of rhythm and even remarkable relative hearing; all these qualities taken together do not mean that musical talent is evident. These properties of hearing are operational properties that make it possible to successfully dissect the musical fabric, understanding why it is constructed this way and not otherwise. But these properties of hearing do not mean that the absolutist has at least a small fraction musical fantasy, imagination and artistry. He is still very far from the requirements that society places on gifted performers and composers. In addition, in the musical profession it is quite possible to get by with good relative pitch, which once again warns society against excessive enthusiasm for the magical properties of absolute pitch. Its rudimentary origin and fundamentally conscious, reflexive nature once again emphasize that the concept of “absolute pitch” is just another myth. Whether to believe in it or not is everyone’s choice.

It is difficult to imagine a good athlete without strong muscles and excellent physical fitness, a good speaker without the ability to speak beautifully and speak freely in front of an audience. Likewise, a good musician is unthinkable without a developed ear for music, which includes a whole range of abilities necessary for successful essay, expressive performance and active perception of music.

Depending on musical characteristics exist different types musical ear. For example, pitch, timbre, modal, internal, harmonic, melodic, intervallic, rhythmic, etc. But one of the most inexplicable is still absolute pitch. Let's figure out what this mysterious phenomenon is.

The name of this type of hearing comes from the Latin word absolutus, which translated means “unconditional, independent, unlimited, perfect.” Absolute pitch refers to “the ability to determine the exact pitch of a sound without relating it to another sound whose pitch is known” (Grove Dictionary). That is, absolute pitch allows, without adjustment, without comparison with any “standard” of height, to instantly, and most importantly, accurately recognize and name the pitch of audible sounds.

Interestingly, the concept of absolute pitch appeared only in the second half of the 19th century. And since that time, scientific minds have been trying to find an answer to the question: “Where does a person get such a unique ability?” Researchers have put forward a variety of hypotheses regarding the origin of absolute pitch. However, there is no clear answer to this question today so no. Some scientists consider it an innate (and also inherited) acoustic-physiological ability, which depends on the anatomical features of the hearing system (more precisely, the structure of the inner ear). Others associate absolute pitch with special mechanisms of the brain, in the cortex of which there are special formant detectors. Still others suggest that absolute pitch is formed due to strong sound impressions in very early childhood and well-developed “photographic” figurative-auditory memory, especially in childhood.

Perfect pitch – quite rare occurrence even among professional musicians, not to mention ordinary connoisseurs musical art who may not even know that nature has awarded them with this rare gift. Determining whether you have absolute pitch or not is quite simple. To “diagnose” this ability, experts use a piano, on which you will be asked to identify and name a particular sound. But to cope with this task, you need to at least know the names of the notes themselves and how they sound. Therefore, as a rule, absolute pitch is detected in early childhood: in children at about 3-5 years of age, usually after becoming familiar with the names of musical sounds.

Absolute pitch is especially important for such musical professions, as a conductor, composer, performer on instruments with unfixed tuning (for example, string instruments), since it allows you to more subtly perceive the pitch of the sound and more accurately control the tuning. And having perfect pitch won’t do any harm to an amateur musician: choosing chords for familiar melodies is, of course, much easier for those with perfect pitch.

But along with undeniable advantages (primarily for professional musicians) this unique ability There are also some disadvantages. In certain cases, absolute pitch can become a real challenge, especially for those who are familiar with the basics of musical literacy. For example, you are sitting in a restaurant during a romantic date. And instead of enjoying the conversation or the aroma delicious dishes under a quiet background sounding music cherished notes periodically “float” in your mind: “la, fa, mi, re, mi, salt, do...”. Not everyone in such a situation is able to “switch off” and focus their attention on the interlocutor.

In addition, it is difficult to find a worse torture for an absolute student than listening to an even inspired performance of a work by those who are “absolutely deaf.” Indeed, with such abilities, a person not only hears the exact pitch of the sound, but also absolutely accurately determines falsehood, the slightest deviations from the correct reference sound. One can only sincerely sympathize with the absolutist during the concert sound of the joint playing of poorly tuned instruments (especially strings) or uncoordinated “dirty” ensemble singing.

By and large, it is not so important whether you have absolute pitch or not. But if you decide to devote yourself to music, and maybe even become a first-class professional musician, then a good ear for music is vital for you. Its development should henceforth become a purposeful and regular action for you. Classes in a special discipline - solfeggio - can help in this difficult matter. But musical ear develops especially actively in the process of musical activity: during singing, playing an instrument, selecting by ear, improvising, composing music.

And most importantly, friends, learn to listen and understand music! Listen to every sound with love and reverence, sincerely enjoy the beauty of every consonance, in order to further give happiness and joy from communicating with music to your grateful listeners!!!

A music teacher can always tell which of his students has perfect pitch. They don't necessarily play instruments better than others or become lead singers in vocal groups.They are distinguished by the ability to instantly (in 1-2 seconds) name sounding note . Such musicians easily and accurately reproduce any melody they hear and can record it. Simultaneously with the perception of sound, they see its position on the staff.

Most musicians identify notes by ear differently. They are guided by the relationship between sounds. Easily recognizing the interval between two notes, they can name one of them only if they are prompted by the second.This is relative hearing, quite sufficient for serious music lessons, but not phenomenal. .

For centuries, it was believed that absolute pitch was the property of the musical elite. According to some estimates, only one in 2,000 people has it. However, everything larger number experiments - from linguistic research to brain scans - prove that this gift is much more common . Some scientists even believe that all people, regardless of musical talent, can develop it. There is hope that modern research will finally bring clarity to the long-standing debate about the nature of absolute pitch: whether it depends on hereditary factors or on learning music at an early age.

At the 1999 Acoustical Society of America convention, psychologist Diana Deitch presented the results of a study conducted at the University of San Diego. It concerned the phenomenon of absolute pitch in people speaking languages ​​with tone stress. . A third of the world's population, mostly from Asia and Africa, speak languages ​​in which the meaning of a word varies depending on the height of the stressed syllable.Vietnamese and Chinese, for example, with early childhood get used to distinguishing sounds by pitch and associating the meaning of words with them. This develops their absolute pitch. . Just as “absolute” musicians immediately name a note they hear, they instantly recognize the meaning of a word by the pitch of the sound. The deviation does not exceed a quarter tone.Diana Deitch considers this proof that absolute pitch can be developed .

Why don't all people have absolute pitch? Danel Levitin of McGill University in Montreal makes an interesting comparison: “A person does not need to look at the rainbow to determine that a tomato is red. Each of us instantly recognizes any of the ten primary colors. But if we easily classify colors, then why can’t we immediately name each of their twelve basic sounds?” Levitin has an answer to this question. Absolute pitch, he argues, includes two components—sound memory and sound ranking. “Absoluteists” automatically associate the memory of a tone with its position on the staff. Without perfect pitch, a person cannot automatically identify a note with its name. IN best case scenario he can only reproduce the note immediately after he hears it.

But where does such a phenomenal ability come from? Is a person born with it or does he acquire it through music lessons? This question is very difficult.

IN musical families The love of music is passed down from generation to generation. But is it only love? What about abilities, including absolute pitch? IN last decade Scientists have come to the conclusion that absolute pitch is “sharpened” over generations. According to Nelson Framer of the University of San Francisco, musical geniuses are created at the genetic level. Framer studied many people with absolute pitch and their relatives. In addition, the objects of his research were people who began to be taught music at an early age. It turned out that hearing develops better in those who have “absolute students” in their family than in those who simply studied music from early childhood. In the end,Framer came to the following conclusion: there is a genetic predisposition to absolute pitch, but this natural gift develops through music lessons .

Many researchers explain the different degrees of musical talent in people with absolute pitch. "With good heredity decisive role The circumstance plays a role in how early the child began to study music, says psychologist Elizabeth Marvin. —The greatest successes are achieved by those who became involved in this activity from three to six years of age. ».

New York University geneticist Peter Gregersen and his colleagues examined 2,700 students at American conservatories and colleges and found that among Asians 32% have absolute pitch, while the rest of the students account for only 7% of “absolute pitchers” . Of course, this ratio reflects the genetic characteristics that have already been mentioned. But, according to Gregersen, both the age of introduction to music and the method of music education itself matter.Students with perfect pitch began to study music on average at the age of five, while the rest began at eight. It is also important that in Asia, when teaching music,preference for the Suzuki method , in which students determine the notes and play only by ear. For example, in Japan, children raise flags whose color corresponds to a particular note. . In the USA, it is customary to immediately teach musical notation. This develops not absolute, but relative pitch.

But if the ease of identifying notes is indeed due to genetic predisposition and learning method, then this should also be reflected in brain function. In order to find out this, a tomograph examination was carried out on musicians with absolute and relative hearing.The scans revealed significant cognitive differences. In musicians with relative pitch, when asked to name a note, a burst of activity occurred in the region of the brain where incoming information is compared with memory. That is, they operated with working memory. In contrast, musicians with absolute pitch relied on long-term memory to identify notes. . It seems that their sound recognition tool is hidden much deeper.

Scientists agree that all people have the rudiments of absolute pitch. In some it develops from generation to generation, in others, on the contrary, it becomes dull.When training, rely on relative hearing does not allow the development of absolute pitch even if the introduction to music began early . It is interesting that even people with developed absolute pitch do not always use it. They also resort to the possibilities provided by relative hearing, since they consider it more useful.

E. Ruderman