Greetings,
Fred writes:
<< Most commonly one tunes the CF
5th, then moves upward through GDA etc. And one ends up with the FF
octave as "proof." There is a very common tendency to make the 5ths
too pure, so that FF ends up too wide. One then moves backward, making
the 5ths a little narrower<snip> Result? The 5ths on the natural keys are the
ones that are closest to
pure, those on the sharps are the most tempered. Hence, the M3s on the
sharps are narrowest, those on the naturals are widest: the reverse of
WT.<< I think it is very plausible that many, many tuners produced tunings
this way. It is in keeping with my own experience learning to tune: I
was taught that 4ths and 5ths were more important than 3rds and 6ths,
and so it would make sense to "hide" the worst 5ths in the sharp keys.
It seems to me that this "unintentional tuning system" was likely
quite prevalent for the past two centuries. >>
I wonder how applicable that was to the tuners of the 18th and 19th
centuries. The Thomas Young tuning instructions were to make 6 evenly tempered
fifths in one direction, and 6 pure fifths in the other, (beginning from C).
So, the intentional tempering of fifths was part of the most refined tuning
system devised.
I think tuners of yore had a different mind set from our equally tempered
goal. They were aware of the "character of the keys", which doesn't exist in
ET and was never taught to us as a goal. We were taught, (Ludwig excepted), to
strive for a temperament in which no fifth was audibly "out of tune", whereas
earlier tuners were more than familiar with a variety of fifths, (having been
exposed to meantone, a wild fifth was not so alien).
Today, we may have a tendency towards clarity in the fifths, since all
the ET thirds are whacked out of tune. In days past, in the era of tonal music,
the staggered progression of thirds via the circle of fifths could have been
the focus.
Regards,
Ed Foote RPT
http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
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