On Jan 17, 2009, at 10:12 PM, Israel Stein wrote: > I have again and again been by the amazed reaction of today's > musicians who are struck by the beauty of meantone triads - > admittedly, not on the piano - when first exposed to them.) In fact, the "meantone triad" is quite common in non-fixed pitch ensemble playing. At least, it is aimed at. I have had lengthy discussions with a few band directors on the subject of intonation, how they conceive of it and what they actually do. There seems to be consensus that, at least in slow passages, players are expected to know which note of the chord they are playing, and if it is the third, they are to adjust it until it is "just" (beatless) to the root and fifth (M3 move down, m3 move up). String faculty say the same thing. "Movable Just" is the predominant aim of most non-fixed pitch ensembles: all intervals beatless. As to how well it is achieved, that varies a lot. When I ask about playing with piano, most commonly the discussion begins with a grimace on their part. "Nothing one can possibly do to the tuning of a piano will make it easy to play with, because it is fixed pitch." I ask whether some alternate tuning might be better than ET. The consensus seems to be that the piano should be in ET, because all students are taught to match to ET the best they can. If it is something else that is significantly different, they will have to make adjustments more or less "in the dark," unless they actually practice with, say, Valotti on a regular basis (as many Baroque musicians today do). Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu
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