devil's advocate..Montal

[Richard Moody]

Comments inserted......
----------
> From: Stephen Birkett <birketts@wright.aps.uoguelph.ca>
> To: pianotech@ptg.org
> Subject: Re: devil's advocate..Montal
> Date: Wednesday, March 18, 1998 10:24 AM
> 
> Richard wrote:
> > Montal is in the bibliography of Jorgensen, but no mention of him
in
> > the text, by way of the index.

  
> Thanks for posting the info on the Swiss reprint...I was about to
do it. 
> As far as I know there is no published translation. 

Shucks.... and I was hoping it was in English even though the title
looked to be in German
 
. There are others too. Is Gall in the 
> bibliography (in German)? And Lehman?

No, but there are lots of non-English titles. 
> 
> Before playing further devil's advocate on the other side of this
fence
> (and the evidence can be used on that side too...anyone notice
why?...read
> the quote carefully), I would be interested if some of you would
try
> Montal's method and report back on the quality of the resulting ET.
(Bill
> Garlick are you there?)
> 
> Stephen
> 
> Stephen Birkett Fortepianos

I tried it, and it came out!!.  Well lets put it this way, the last
note tuned e1 was only a little off from a and I was able to get
enough from b1 to get it tolerable. Which I consider very excellent
for having to do adjustments.  
BUT.... its not ET in the sense that the thirds don't sound as
required. That could be my fault, execpt  instructions aren't given
of how to correct the thirds.   HOWEVER,  if the fifths and fourths
are played, I doubt that any one could hear discrepencies, unless
played real slow and a few comparisons made and this  is amazing.  In
other words to tell it is not ET you would have to apply piano
tuner's tests.  There are none that even come close to a wolf, in
fact at worst they are  too pure. The chords all sounded OK.  

	Now I must ask a question that might seem elementry, but could you
explain, "the test for a wide fourth"  (a-d1) is then applied."  What
I figured out was that the top of the fourth, d1 forms the top of a
sixth with f and the bottom of the fourth a forms a third with f.  I
found that if this third and the sixth beat the same, or the sixth is
ever so slightly faster, then the fourth is wide.  If the fourth is
pure, then the sixth will beat slower than the third.  I hope this is
right, I could check it on the spread sheet I think. (boy do I hope
this pans out : {}   
	If this is a common test, I have never heard of it.  It is a very
interesting test. 

	Some of the things Montal says about the thirds can be taken that he
wasn't _exactly_ describing ET.  The correct description should be,
The thirds get faster ascending, doubling their rate each octave. 
Examples of flaws would be a higher third beating slower than a lower
third.  A very minor flaw is two consecutive thirds beating the same.
 
	His exercise of tuning three thirds and having the upper note of the
last third be the octave of the bottom note of the first third, is
amusing to think about and fun (but frustrating ) to try.  A bettter
endeavor  is to tune a pure octave, fit the thirds in so that each
beats a little faster.  Then tune a third below the octave, and see
if that forms an octave with the bottom note of the top third. And
this bottom third then beats twice as slow as the top third. 
	His words "These thirds f-a, a-c#1, and dflat-f1 ought to be equally
wide and when struck one after the other ought to produce exactly the
same effect on the ear." , don't describe imho accurately enough the
way the thirds should sound in ET.  But this is not enough to say he
did not or could not tune ET, or it is far enough off to be called
something else.  Perhaps if one had to, they could call it...
Historic ET  ?? 

Richard Moody