The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #148510 Message #3450083
Posted By: Jack Campin
10-Dec-12 - 08:25 AM
Thread Name: why six flats?
Subject: RE: why six flats?
The other way round, I've come across a 19th century transcription of a fiddle tune in G# minor (five sharps). It's a lot more playable a semitone down (a fairly typical mid-18th-century G minor reel), and older versions of the tune have it that way, so why?...
What I figured had happened was that the transcriber was using a piano that was a semitone flat, as often happened to old pianos (you couldn't bring them up to pitch or they'd explode) and the violinist he was notating the tune from stayed at concert pitch.