Unequal Temperaments

[Richard Moody]

----- Original Message -----
From: <A440A@AOL.COM>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Friday, June 09, 2000 7:35 AM
Subject: Re: Unequal Temperaments


> Ric writes:
> << > The intellectual understanding of temperaments is far and away
> > "better" than actually playing or listening to them.  IMHO.   >>
>
> Greetings,
> I think it is far more important to learn what the changes of
> temperament do for the music than it is to understand the Rubric's Cube
> nature of temperament itself.  Understanding tonality intellectually is
> valuable, yes, but learning to sense tonality on a real basis, ie,
listening
> and playing on a variety of tunings, is, imo, far more important.

    Yes, but sooner or later the player is bound to ask, "what is the
musical basis of this temperament? or "what is the idea behind this
temperament?"  I think a quicker understanding can be reached when the
theory behind the temperament is known.   In Meantone for instance the
object is pure thirds.  Of course that leads to some thirds that are
"wolves", plus a wolf fifth, also why G# is not Ab musically and so on.   Or
take the so called "wells".     They seem to be choosing a few pure fifths
and a few flat fifths so that there is no wolf fifth, allowing transposition
through all the keys, so most of the key signatures are available for
keyboard composition.
Some temps seem to favor certain keys, some seem to favor an easy
temperament to tune.
Some  for the pure intellectual aspect, of solving some age old
temperament "problem".

>Secondly, without the sensual rewards that many get from
> tonal variety,  there often isn't sufficient interest in pursuing the
> rationale and history behind it.

   Right,  so when they become interested in this aspect where do they turn
for information?   Since I like to know the theory of what I am tuning, I
could have at least an elementary conversation with the curious player.

>However, saying that an aural tuner
> will produce a tuning  superior to one done by a tech using an ETD is
>going to be hard to demonstrate.
> Regards,
> Ed Foote RPT


I don't say that, because the ETDs  enable top notch tuning.  I never
noticed differences between aural and ETD tuning in professional settings.
This I base on the assumption that road show pianos were about half and
half. (In the 80's)   In the local area though I did substitute tune for
two machine tuners and two aural tuners. (ie had never owned a machine).  I
couldn't detect a demonstrable difference between any of us.  In some
situations I did not know and couldn't tell if the piano I was tuning had
been tuned last by me or the other tuner with machine.   And this is using
all the tests and checks.

    But getting back to the subject...
    In another post you wrote....
    >>I have for some time been suggesting that Chopin's music might have a
>>significantly different structure when played on the DeMorgan temperament.

What is a DeMorgan?
    One thing I like about our computer times is that if only the cents
deviation from ET are known, they could be put into a spread sheet and the
beat rates calculated and aural tuners can have a go at it.  And it is in
the beat tables that the musical nature of the temperament is revealed, that
hours and hours of listening and practice alone would only partly reveal.
I think an intellectual comprehension along with playing and/or listening is
the key to a "better" understanding.    ---ric