Using historical accounts of harpsichord touch to empirically investigate the production and perception of dynamics on the 1788 Taskin

Abstract

This article investigates the extent of production and perception of dynamic differences on a French historical harpsichord, extensively revised in 1788 by Pascal Taskin. A historical review reports on the descriptions of two different types of touch found in treatises of the 18th century. These two touches (loud/struck and soft/pressed) were used to perform single tones on the lower, upper, peau de buffle (PDB) registers (the last of which Taskin is credited with having invented) and the coupled 8-foot registers to investigate differences in dynamics. Acoustic measurements show varied differences of up to 11 dB for the two types of touch over different pitches in each register. The strongest difference is measured in the first harmonic of note F2 on the PDB. A listening experiment was conducted to test whether these differences are perceivable. Participants performed a discrimination task using pairs of single tones. Participants were able to perform significantly better than chance in correctly identifying whether pairs of single tones were same or different with respect to loudness [t(24) = 12.01, p < 0.001]. Accuracies were influenced by pitch and register, the PDB providing the strongest accuracies over the four registers tested.

A SMARC Effect for Loudness

“…In many Western languages, loudness is conveyed by means of spatial terms (e.g., loud sounds are “high” and quiet sounds are “low”). In addition, evidence from some recent studies supports the view that loudness, as well as pitch, might be spatially represented ( Chang & Cho, 2015 ; Fernandez-Prieto et al., 2017 ; Hartmann & Mast, 2017 ). Therefore, here we expected that the variation of the probe intensity, with respect to a reference tone, would lead to higher performance (shorter RTs and fewer errors) in case of spatial compatibility between stimulus loudness (low vs. high) and response position (low placed vs. high placed).…”

“…The results of Hartmann and Mast (2017) and Chang and Cho (2015) suggest a possible left–right spatial representation of loudness with quiet sounds represented on the left and loud sounds represented on the right. However, as mentioned earlier, loudness is often addressed along the vertical dimension: high and low.…”

“…In many Western languages, the loudness of sounds is conveyed “spatially”: Loud sounds are “high,” whereas quiet sounds are “low.” However, in comparison to pitch, little is known about whether loudness might also be spatially represented and, if yes, how this representation might influence response selection. The possible spatial representation of loudness (i.e., a SMARC effect for loudness) has been investigated in three studies (i.e., Chang & Cho, 2015 ; Hartmann & Mast, 2017 ; Fernandez-Prieto, Spence, Pons, & Navarra, 2017 ). Hartmann and Mast ( 2017 , Experiment 2c) presented recordings of single digits at a high (or low) intensity and asked participants to respond with a left or right keyboard key whether the digit was quiet or loud.…”

“…The authors observed faster reactions to quiet digits when the response was executed with a left-sided key and faster responses to loud digits when the response was executed with the right-sided key. In Chang and Cho (2015) , participants listened to a reference tone, which was fixed in frequency (1,000 Hz) and in intensity. The reference tone was followed by a probe tone, which had the same frequency as that of the reference tone, but could be either quieter or louder than the reference tone.…”

“…(2017) asked participants to respond to the loudness of sounds with the response buttons placed along the vertical axis (see Fernandez-Prieto et al., 2017 , Figure 3 ). Similarly to Chang and Cho (2015) , Fernandez-Prieto et al. asked the participants to judge whether the second of two consecutive tones with fixed frequency (261 Hz) was louder than the first.…”