ht and et

[Susan Kline]

At 02:09 PM 1/30/98 -0500, you wrote:
>List
>Allow me to cast my vote for ET...whether for jazz or classic.
>
>just a lowbrow!!
>
>Ralph Martin
>

Allow me to cast my vote for ET, except in very particular circumstances,
by people who really know what they are doing. The rest of us can experiment
on our own pianos, playing our own music of whatever type, and developing
our own tastes. 

Disclosure and permission, ALWAYS, _especially_ for performing pianists.
Anything else is forcing them to improvise, without warning, in front of
an audience. If they have not already adjusted to the temperament in the 
past, several weeks of practicing with it might hardly be sufficient for 
them to change their musical interpretation and feel comfortable. Who are 
we to inflict our notions on them? 

If it is perfectly easy for them to adjust to a "mild" whatever, it is
probably because the "ht" was so close to "et" as to make no never mind.

In all this bandwidth, I've seen no mention of the tolerances normal in
performing and listening to music. "How do string players manage to play
with the tempered scale of a piano?" Nothing simpler. We listen with our
hearts instead of with a micrometer. Also, we listen to melodic rather
than harmonic intonation. In successive rather than simultaneous intervals,
a structural sense of size matters more than beats. (Mental picture: two
fine, generous major seconds, like pillars, added together into a third, 
below a small semitone, which leads strongly to the note above; add them
together, and you will have a clear perfect fourth. Fourths, fifths, octaves,
all untempered: supports perfectly aligned and dovetailed, like in a timber
frame building.) 

Good string intonation is a matter of a vocal inflection, almost. One or 
two cent differences are so trivial in actual playing as to be completely 
unnoticed.

With clean, warm unisons and musically-sized and uniform octaves, the 1
cent differences in temperament are totally indistinguishable, IMHO, not
just for musicians, but for _everybody_, when actually listening to real
music. (No, Mr. Bremmer, I am not calling you a liar.)

As a string player, I float on a Pythagorean ocean 41 years deep, and 
just thirds give me a pain.

just a highbrow!

Susan

Susan Kline
P.O. Box 1651
Philomath, OR 97370
skline@proaxis.com

"By using your intelligence, you can sometimes make your problems twice as
complicated."
			-- Ashleigh Brilliant