FRED, -----Original Message----- From: Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu> To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 7:30 am Subject: Re: [CAUT] temperament for Schubert (Fred Sturm) <SNIP> Jorgensen's major thesis is that ET was not practiced in fact before the 20th century (because of lack of precise enough instructions). This thesis is based on a definition of ET as "able to pass the PTG tuning test." Is this actually an appropriate threshold? I am not convinced that it is. I think there is a much wider range of "quasi-ET" that is, for practical purposes, indistinguishable from ET, unisons being equal. That is, that neither sharp-eared musicians nor sharp-eared tuners (with possible rare exceptions) would be able to hear a musical difference, let alone a general public. Much of Jorgensen's work on so-called "Victorian temperaments" is an attempt to intuit what "mistakes" would be likely to to occur following a particular temperament sequence, even though the sequence itself prescribes ET quite explicitly, and certainly does not "ask for key color." FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND ABOUT HOW MUCH DEVIATION A TEMPERAMENT CAN HAVE AND STILL PASS THE PTG TUNING TEST, ISN'T IT POSSIBLE THAT MANY PEOPLE TODAY WHOSE AIM IT IS TO TUNE EQUAL TEMPERAMENT ARE ACTUALLY PRODUCING SOMETHING CLOSER TO THE REALM OF QUASI-EQUAL? It is certainly true that the historical data are mixed. For many years, there was an acceptance of the false notion that ET was generally practiced from the time of Bach. In the=2 0zeal to correct this historical error, a contrary opinion has been promoted: that ET didn't exist, or at least that WT was prevalent, to the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. OK, SO IN MY NAIVETE I DRANK JORGENSEN'S KOOL-AID. I don't think either position is true. I think that several tuning traditions lived side by side, from the early 18th century through the early 20th, and that very reasonable approximation of ET was one of them from fairly early in that span. There was a strong movement in favor of ET from at least the early 19th century, with almost all tuning instructions purporting to lead to ET. So while one musician/composer might well be exposed to non-ET tuning for the most part (because of the strength of tradition over theory), and another mostly to "quasi-ET," we have no way of knowing which was which, or whether they cared. Unless they tell us. Hummel tells us he didn't care. Schubert didn't tell us anything about tuning. We're left hanging, but at least we have fodder for endless conversation <G>. THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING, EH? Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu ALAN EDER -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090113/fdf0bea5/attachment.html>
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