Early in my tuning experiences somewhere I was told to hide my errors, for surely there would be errors, by "setting the bearings" from C#-C# or F#-F# or A#-A# etc. I also used the double octave tempermant method. With the advent of ETD's I noticed how close but yet far away I was. Just a comment. Henry Nicolaides Piano Technician SIU School of Music 1000 S. Normal Avenue Carbondale, Illinois 62901 email: henryn at siu.edu > From: fssturm at unm.edu> To: caut at ptg.org> Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:54:00 -0700> Subject: Re: [CAUT] temperament for Schubert (Fred Sturm)> > On Jan 12, 2009, at 3:45 PM, A440A at aol.com wrote:> > > It is hard to> > imagine that the vast majority of tuning done before 1900 was > > anything but> > irregular in the traditional manner, i.e., dissonance in the tonic > > thirds increasing> > with the number of accidentals in the key signature. This is the > > common form> > of virtually every non-ET temperament documented.> > Let me offer a counter-argument, based on a "what is likely" > scenario: the reverse WT argument. Most practical historical tuning > systems (practical instructions for how to "lay the bearings," set the > temperament) from 1800 on(actually this can be said of earlier systems > as well, but I am talking about those "obviously intending ET") start > at C and go through the circle of 5ths. 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. Human nature will say that one will go as > short a distance backward as one can.> 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.> Regards,> Fred Sturm> University of New Mexico> fssturm at unm.edu> > > _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™: Keep your life in sync. http://windowslive.com/explore?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_t1_allup_explore_012009 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090114/41105d58/attachment.html>
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