[CAUT] temperament for Schubert

[David Ilvedson]

Fred,

So instead of tuning you are answering email using a written source in the studio you are suppose to be tuning in?... '-]   How are you emailing?   Are you using a smart phone?   For the length of your email, it seems like a lot to do on a smart phone?...

David Ilvedson, RPT
Pacifica, CA  94044

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Fred Sturm" <fssturm at unm.edu>
To: caut at ptg.org
Received: 1/12/2009 11:53:56 AM
Subject: Re: [CAUT] temperament for Schubert


>On Jan 12, 2009, at 12:08 PM, reggaepass at aol.com wrote:

>> Thanks for this characteristically thoughtful and thorough  
>> response.  It puts many things into perspective for me: Hummel; the  
>> integrity with which temperaments may have been realized; and why  
>> Neidhardt would be a good choice for Schubert.
>>
>> Alan Eder
>  	Just one more note about all this, having to do with Hummel's  
>attitude. There is a quote in Jorgensen's book (I happen to be tuning  
>in the studio of a piano prof who has the book on his shelf, hence my  
>seemingly encyclopedic knowledge <G>), where Hummel notes the various  
>tuning systems published by several authors, and says that they were  
>more appropriate for earlier instruments (including early pianos with  
>bichord stringing). Because the "modern" piano has thicker strings and  
>more of them, he says a different tuning system is needed, one that is  
>easier to accomplish:

>"The complicated propositions laid down by these authors, cannot now  
>be so easily put into practice, and we are compelled to adopt a system  
>of temperament by which tuning is made much more easy and convenient.  
>That such is the case appears evident, since many who profess to be  
>tuners can hardly be said to have an ear so acute as to discriminate  
>with the requisite nicety the minute deviations in the different  
>chords of the unequal temperaments proposed by the authors."

>	I think this is very telling. Hummel was one of the most important  
>composers of his time (Schubert was dwarfed by comparison, in his  
>lifetime), and he is saying essentially that ET is good enough, and  
>that he doesn't really care about the niceties of the theoreticians.  
>Certainly makes you think.
>	BTW, the other person I mentioned, Peter Prelleur, I like  
>particularly because he was a practical musician, not a theoretician  
>(like Neidhardt). So perhaps what he has to say about tuning has more  
>basis in reality. Most writing about tuning comes from theoreticians,  
>figuring things out mathematically and fiddling with their monochords.  
>Prelleur was English, same time as Neidhardt.

>Regards,
>Fred Sturm
>University of New Mexico
>fssturm at unm.edu