Tom writes: << I was surprised to learn that ET did not really exist prior to 1917. Now, the part I'm unclear on: I believe that it was stated that this treatise, published in 1917, was the first to utilize the concept of listening to beats in order to tune a temperament. First of all, is the above information correct? << Greetings, Richard B.'s response was, to my way of thinking, correct, I will add the following; I have a copy of W.Braid-White's 1906 publication,"Theory and Practise of Fortepiano Building" in which he clearly describes beats. Helmholtz had gotten fairly close to the same logic 30-4- years before. Jerry Cree Fischer demonstrated the utility of hearing 11 bps in a booklet published, I think, in 1911. However, rather than considering the concept of "listening to beats" in order to tune a temperament, maybe we should consider when it became the norm to "count" beats. I think all tuning has been done by judging the amount of beating, but it was judged by "musical" standards earlier, and today is done by comparitive (counting and matching) standards. By this I mean, the 1775 tuner, who was possibly a worker in an instrument shop or a local church choirmaster, hummed a tune, found his interval, listened to the quality of a third, made a decision, and went on to another, playing out an abstruse game of give and take until all the chords,(with their thirds) in an octave were arranged in some semblance of order. That was a lot easier than trying to arrange an interlocking set of relationships that didn't vary between keys. You could do this by musical judgement and not need to exactly match certain rates. An analogy is the attempt to space 13 pennies exactly equidistant without the use of a measuring device other than your senses. It is a lot easier to place them so that the spaces between them are each a little larger than the preceding one. In the former, there is only one answer and it has to be replicated exactly 12 times, in the latter, there is a lot of room for variety while still getting it 'right'. Which would be the temperament a worker would prefer to do? >>And if it's true that tuners didn't use beats to tune a piano prior to 1917, what did they listen to? Harmonic values, progressions as the thirds departed from C,(or in the Valotti style, F). It isn't hard to make a pure C-E, then open it up a little so that you can fit four fifths between, etc. They were listening to beats, but I don't think they were assigning a numerical value, just how "good" or harsh" they were. That is why Jorgensen calls it a lost art, it was artistic musical judgement that made a good tuner, ET only calls for a scientific approach. ( I know, I know, the perfect ET "has to come from the tuner's ear and judgement", but when you get down to variations of 1 cent or less between keys, you are beyond the limit of discrimination for virtually all tuners and certainly all pianists. ) The modern hardware easily surpasses this on well scaled instruments,(big ones), and I don't think "art" describes something a computer chip will do in response to a set of numbers from us. (there is a huge semantics room involved here). Regards, Ed Foote RPT
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