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In the Forum: Musical Discussions
In the Thread: Boris Mikhailovich Teplov
Post Subject: Maybe we lost it?Posted by rowuk on: 5/30/2026
 Romy the Cat wrote:
Robin, when I told you that you do not know how deep the rabbit hole is, I actually meant something. Please take me seriously.
I am very familiar with the entire history of keys used in musicality, synesthesia perception, and I thought naming my post WTC would give a clue. The reason why I would love to talk to professor Teplov on the subject is that I am quite curious why the mapping between key and perception exists within the human psyche. He was a biologist and neuroscientist. This is exactly the type of person who should have insight into the subject.

Furthermore, why has this capacity of our psyche and consciousness never been filtered out over thousands of years of human evolution? If we maintain this quality, then there is a purpose for it, and if there is a purpose, then me, as an engineer, naturally start thinking about how an "injection channel" can be introduced into this phenomenon in order to achieve exactly what I want. Yes, I am a man, and I do feel that my responsibility is to go fuck up the world and see what happens.

I do not expect others to follow my thought process, but since I learned where it comes from within me, I do not explain myself unless the right questions are asked.

Romy, I very much am taking this (and you) seriously. As my last post entered with: these mappings were prior to the 20th century. Before that, there were different mappings due to the instruments not being able to play in all keys. This is documented in what is now called the Doctrine of Affects based on 16th, -17th century teachings by 
Lorenzo Giacomini (1552–1598) in Orationi e discorsi (1597)
René Descartes (1596-1650) in Les Passions de l'âme (1649) and "Meditations on first Philosophy" (1641)
Johann Mattheson (1681-1764) "Der vollkommene Kappelmeister" (1739)


There of course is much more. What I am suggesting is that Teplov rediscovered (at least in part) something previously well understood, bound into the lives of the creatives (for centuries) and well documented, but lost by most (or replaced) somewhere between 1850 and 1900.

All of this discussion however has one very large blemish. Intonation has not been constant over the last 600 years. What is for instance C-major today (A=442 Hz), was played 1 half tone lower during Bachs time (A=415), so if we look at the mappings, a D-Major piece from Bach would be mapped to Db today.

If you want to experiment, all it takes is a DAW and a plugin where you change pitch, but not speed. Lower you favorite Bach organ work ½ step down to the pitch that Bach would have experienced and see what happens to your perception. In my experience it results in a color explosion unlike anything we can get in other ways. This is certainly not food for an injection channel, but perhaps a "more perfect world" where the actual intent and expectations of the composer (or pick any other type of art form) are injected into our perception of pleasure.

As compelling as research of the DNA of perception may be, I can't help but think that at the end of the day there will only be a small handful of followers getting benefit and very possibly a huge amount of people with the opposite.

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