----- Original Message ----- From: Tom Servinsky <tompiano@gate.net> To: <pianotech@ptg.org> Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2001 6:27 AM Subject: Re: more on this temperament thing | I still wonder how Chopin, Mozart, or Beethoven, would be composing if they | were in today's world playing on today's instruments. I personally feel, | they too would favor the flexibility of ET. Of course, that's pure | speculation! | Tom Servinsky,RPT But interesting speculation. We wonder why in this age (of ET) there are no compositions on the level of Chopin, Mozart, or Beethoven especially since the piano has been in its fullest evolution for the last 110 years. Indeed it is the new pianos that keeps us enthralled with the old masters. Regarding what temperament the masters may have heard or preferred, is a question so far not answered on the academic level at least. There is no direct evidence from the Masters themselves regarding the tuning of their instruments. We have letters from Mozart visiting piano makers of his time. Yet nothing of how he tuned his instrument. If there were several methods or temperaments available there should have been some mention of this somewhere in all of the Master's writings about their music. Or was tuning so universaly the same that no one thought to mention it? Perhaps temperament didn't matter to them. The evidence points to either a meantone or efforts towards ET. Since most of what we read from the masters has been translated perhaps tuning issues were not considered interesting enough to translate. However more than a few works were written on method as in Mozart's father's book on violin playing. Surely in these, tuning must have been mentioned. Since the musicians tuned their own instruments it is inconceivable that nothing has come down to us from the Baroque and Classical period that show how how the players were instructed to tune in that time. To be sure there are writings from that time that mention tuning such as Mersenne in compilation of musical instruments of his time, or articles on tuning theory such as Young, Huygens or Couperin. (Couperin I think needs to be researched for actual instructions in "L'art de toucher le clavecin" for example) But actual instructions for the average musician on how to tune his harpsichord, spinet, virginal, or clavichord are strangely lacking or have simply been over looked by musicologists and music historians. We do have Pietro Aaron's instructions from 1529 which indicate quarter comma meantone. On the historians wish list are similar instructions from 1629 and 1729, and 1829. There are hand written outlines of tuning schemes that can be found in music manuscripts in collections from those times. However the ones I have seen (Thomas Jefferson) show only the sequence of notes, with an interval, usually a 3rd and the word "test" but they don't say what the test is!. ---ric
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