Singing
The human voice is among the most pitch-flexible instruments in common use. Pitch can be varied with no restraints and adjusted in the midst of performance, without needing to retune. Although the explicit use of just intonation fell out of favour concurrently with the increasing use of instrumental accompaniment (with its attendant constraints on pitch), most a cappella ensembles naturally tend toward just intonation because of the comfort of its stability. Barbershop quartets are a good example of this.
Read more about this topic: Just Intonation
Famous quotes containing the word singing:
“O you singers solitary, singing by yourself, projecting me,
O solitary me listening, never more shall I cease perpetuating you
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what
there in the night,
By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there aroused, the fire, the sweet hell within,
The unknown want, the destiny of me.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“I have felt darkness lead me by the hand
Over the hill to greet the singing dawn....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“My mother had a maid called Barbary;
She was in love, and he she loved proved mad,
And did forsake her. She had a song of “Willow,”
An old thing ‘twas, but it expressed her fortune,
And she died singing it. That song tonight
Will not go from my mind.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)