[CAUT] professor tuning variables

[Jeff Tanner]

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Fred Sturm 
  To: caut at ptg.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 12:13 PM
  Subject: Re: [CAUT] professor tuning variables


  On Mar 4, 2009, at 8:32 AM, Jeff Tanner wrote:


    We already know "a bit about UET and a bit of relevant music history."  But neither we nor anyone else on the planet know enough about the two to make a claim that we are the experts in putting the two together. It isn't "a bit" we will be expected to know.  If we bring it up, then we'll be expected to push it farther. The point is that I can foresee having a very few, if more than one or two clients - probably composers - who will want you to learn every doggone temperament in the book and then decide to make up a few of his own.  And it will be up to us to spend hours and hours of time researching and practicing various temperaments for one person instead of working on the verticals in the practice rooms or finally getting that grand restrung that's been sitting in the shop for 6 months, with 17 more in line after it.


  Hi Jeff, 
  I think this notion is the result of Mr. Jorgensen's work.... 
Hey Fred,
No.  It is actually the result of reading your recent posts on the subject, working for composition faculty, and paying attention to the tuning requests I've read on this list over the years.  Just your posts over the past couple of months have revealed that what we in the US thought we knew of the subject of temperament evolution is apparently incorrect (and I am not referring to Mr. Jorgensen's work, but to my own experience as an undergraduate collegiate student of music history).  But we have also seen posts from technicians having been asked by composers to tune pianos in ways they were not designed to be tuned, and in fact instances where such requests could result in damage to the instruments.

Yes, I realize Mr. Jorgensen's writings are confusing - though I admit, I've only consulted the big red book, TUNING.  The first time I consulted it, I was thinking of offering an appropriate HT for a Hadyn piece several years ago that was to be performed with fortepiano, cello, oboe, and perhaps something else - I can't recall now which composition it was.  After hours of searching through the book for a temperament appropriate for Hadyn, I wound up with one of Hadyn's former principal oboists recipe's for tuning a fortepiano -- it would have passed the PTG exam for ET with 95% or higher!  Our historical music professor suggested Valotti/Young. So, I tried it.  In fact, after spending about 3 hours perfecting it on the fortepiano for the rehearsal, I was accused of having not tuned it!  I was basically reprimanded (by our highly esteemed cello faculty member) to "stick with ET".

(same person also highly praised my concert tunings - which is very much relative to your excellent comments on mathematical tunings in this month's journal)

No. My glass is not half empty.  I am convinced by what I have read that there is too much we do not, and cannot know, to position tuners as experts in linking temperament appropriately to period music.  But if we attempt to do so, we risk damaging what is actually truth, perhaps permanently. I would lean to allowing the musicologists to debate these matters.  Personally, I am convinced that most of the music world evolved to ET because, well, the keyboard needs to be able to play with other instruments, some of which tune to A, some to B flat, some to C, others to E, etc., and because music has evolved in such a way that it requires the fixed pitch keyboard to be completely versatile.  Perhaps, too, it is because as a musician I am primarily a vocalist.  And as an aging baritone without enough time to keep my voice in condition, I might want to sing Schubert's "Erl Konig" a step lower without changing the color, and without retuning the piano.  There are all sorts of reasons for my opinions, the least of which can be tied to one source.

I am absolutely not opposed to tuning a harpsichord or fortepiano or other period instrument to an appropriately requested temperament upon request. But I don't buy that any regarded composer of the modern piano purposefully composed for an unequal temperament and am convinced that if the return to the days of multiple temperaments is of the tuners' persuasion, that those who follow in our footsteps may curse us.

Jeff
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