Oh, I don't know Fred, I kind of liked the idea of Tuner's Discretion. :-) Unfortunately it did not work out to my taste. It would have been nice to try different temperaments and at least listen to some selected variations to determine the best. I was going from what the players were telling me. Even they had differing opinions. It is just so subjective at times! When I get the chance, I will give Poletti's Werckmeister instructions a look and give it a try. When they do the Big Bach Bash again next year I hope to spend more time trying different temperaments. Thanks! Don Donald McKechnie Piano Technician Ithaca College dmckech at ithaca.edu 607.274.3908 > From: Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu> > Date: October 7, 2009 11:06:18 AM EDT > To: caut at ptg.org > Subject: Re: [CAUT] Goldberg Variations report > Reply-To: caut at ptg.org > > > On Oct 5, 2009, at 10:33 AM, Donald McKechnie wrote: > >> I started out with Valotti/Young since it is nicely centered on G. >> I also tried Kirnberger and Werckmeister. All of these three worked >> well for the most part but there were certain passages in a number >> of the variations where things got too spicy. I tried a few others >> from rollingball.com but the results were similar. >> >> I was not getting anywhere with the temperaments so I decided to >> practice that old tradition of Tuner's Discretion. Since Valotti/ >> Young is centered on G I tweaked a few of the accidentals thus >> slowing down some of the thirds. I put this tuning on the >> instruments for the dress rehearsal. They said this worked well. I >> was not at the dress so this modified temperament is what I used >> for the recital. >> >> What I heard in the recital is a bit different from the report I >> got after the dress rehearsal. I found the modified Valotti/Young a >> bit too spicy for my taste in certain passages. For the most part >> the faster variations sounded pretty good but there were times in >> most of the slow variations where it did not work for me. The one >> exception was the slow variation #25. It really worked on this >> piece. Quite surprising! > > > Very interesting account. The back and forth between not spicy > enough and too spicy is quite revealing. Lehman is not spicy enough, > but Vallotti is too spicy. They are really quite close, and I'd say > Lehman would be about the best choice for someone who wanted a > temperament like Vallotti but a bit milder. Essentially, Vallotti is > a string of six 1/6 comma 5ths (about twice as narrow as ET, 3.6 > cents narrow) together with a string of six just 5ths. Lehman > basically just takes one of those 1/6 comma 5ths and divides its > narrowness between two 5ths (two 1/12 comma 5ths, about ET size, 1.8 > cents narrow). The details (if you include the "schisma" 5th, which > is 2 cents narrow), makes it just a little bit milder still, but the > difference is quite subtle. The widest 3rds become slightly smaller > than Pythagorean, while Vallotti does have three Pythagorean thirds > (two i you account for the schisma 5th, which Vallotti did - I don't > remember just now what Young did, whether he was using syntonic or > Pytahgorean comma 5ths). > With Kirnberger III and Werckmeister, you have the same > Pythagorean thirds as Vallotti (more of them in Kirnberger), but the > narrow 5ths can sound pretty objectionable to someone unaccustomed > to mean tone. > Tweaking a few accidentals is a tricky business, as any individual > change has more than one additional consequence (there is an equal > and opposite one, but others as well). If you move an accidental in > Vallotti, you are narrowing one pure 5th, but widening another, so > you are adding to the total "out of tuneness" of the thirds, taken > as a whole. Really, I think you have to have a total structure in > mind and follow a pattern (meaning, practically speaking, a chain of > 5ths), or you are almost bound to run into trouble. If you want to > emulate what tuners did then, I think that the Werckmeister > practical instructions I posted a link to earlier is a good starting > point. http://www.polettipiano.com/Pages/pag1engpaul.html > > Regards, > Fred Sturm > University of New Mexico > fssturm at unm.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091007/8f4a86a2/attachment.htm>
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