you wrote:<Today, I heard, for the first time in a long time, a CD of Benjamin Britten's "Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings" (recorded 1944). Dennis Brain plays some amazing french horn solos wherin some notes sound incredibly out of tune. There is one note that could easily be 50 cents flat. But the effect is tremendous: the intonation of every note seems to have been chosen for a particular purpose rather than simply being "out of tune". I would describe it, from my ET perspective, as knowing the rules of equal temperament and knowing when to break them.> Without touching on the HT vs ET controversy, It is interesting that you mentioned the Britten "Serenade". The french horn is speciffically instructed to play "natural", that is, without using the valves, and playing only the natural harmonics of the horn. It is indeed a lovely effect, but it is just that: an effect. And as a violist myself, I can attest that we string players, and indeed all instrumentalists, have a very different take on pitch, which is why you will hear violists (and violinists) fudging their thirds and sevenths, or tuning their low strings directly to the piano rather than the perfect fifths we use in an orchestra setting. Standardization wouldn't exactly describe it.... Steve
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