FWIW fretted instruments are not actually equally tempered instruments and require subtle manipulations of the tuning depending on which key you are playing in. David Love www.davidlovepianos.com From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Israel Stein Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 6:39 PM To: caut at ptg.org Subject: Re: [CAUT] historic temp thoughts Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:18:04 -0700 Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu> wrote: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > Yes, the lute would most likely be fretted to ET (exceptions existed, > but seem to have been pretty rare). And it seems that lute and > harpsichord were used together, especially theorbo and harpsichord. > Yet the overwhelming bulk of evidence says that up to 1700 1/4 comma > MT was by far the predominant tuning for keyboards, throughout Europe > and especially Italy and France. So one has to assume they made do. As > for the recorder (and other woodwinds), the way they adapted > intonation was through a wide variety of alternate fingerings, > together with embouchure adjustment. Well, Fred, I don't know what you mean by "they made do", but there is plentiful evidence that when it came to tuning, at least in Italy, keyboards yielded to frets rather than the other way around. At least that's what the writings of Vincenzo Galilei - one of the foremost lutenists and theoreticians of the period (and Galileo's father) - suggest. In Monteverdi's operas (and I do see "Ninfa's lament" on the program) a very specific configuration of the orchestra is used to allow this. Monteverdi actually scored for two separate and distinct halves of the orchestra - one with fretted instruments (archlutes, theorbos and such) playing plucked continuo along with a harpsichord and an organ, with viols (fretted) in the string section and lots of lutes and guitars. This half of the orchestra - including the keyboards - was tuned in equal temperament. The other half of the orchestra used harp as the plucked continuo instrument - along with its own organ and harpsichord - and the violin family comprised the string section. This part of the orchestra was tuned in meantone. The two never play together - for obvious reasons. Which suggests to me that people went to great lengths to allow fretted instruments to play in ET - even when MT was desired in other contexts - and "compromised" the tuning of the other instruments, including keyboards... I was fortunate to participate in such a production of Monteverdi's Orfeo during the 1993 Boston Early Music Festival - under the direction of Andrew Parrot (English conductor and scholarly authority on the period - including Monteverdi) and with an international cast and orchestra. The fretted instrument section was led by Paul O'Dette (who played continuo on the archlute) - one of today's great virtuoso lutenists, an authority on the lute and DIrector of the Historical Performance program at Eastman. This is how they tuned the orchestra - frets in equal, unfretted in meantone. (I worked on the set and pumped the regal bellows for Andrew Lawrence King - the British harpist who doubled on the regal and tuned all the keyboard instruments - harpsichords, organs and regal - when the regular tuner wasn't available). So there is good authority to insist that equal temperament is appropriate (or even recommended) for Italian music of this period when fretted instruments are involved. Since you mentioned recorders and wind instruments, I have to say that renaissance and transitional (early baroque) recorders as well as shawms and curtals/dulcians ( I own a full consort of each) were typically pitched to be played in meantone, and to play in other temperaments it was necessary to leak or shade finger holes in addition to using alternate fingerings and embouchure games - all of which isn't such a big deal (ask me how I know). Sackbuts and trumpets of course have no finger holes - they depend on embouchure games and slides (yes Virginia, there was a slide trumpet) to control pitch and so have more flexibility (assuming they are not playing too low on the overtone series). The technique for controlling pitch on that other "brass" instrument of the period - the cornetto - involves selling one's soul to the devil, since getting anything resembling a predictable pitch out of those things (finger holes notwithstanding) appears to be impossible for folks who use solely human agency and the breathing mechanism they were born with... Israel Stein -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091130/335bf269/attachment.htm>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC