OFF (*was: neurology)

[Don]

Hi Ed,

No, string players do not aim for "just" thirds when they double stop. For
example g4 b4. We would tune the G to the g3 and the b4 to e5. That leaves
some kind of third. What Susan is speaking of is melodic intonation. It
mirrors what one does with one's voice if you sing a diatonic scale. I.E.
7th, 6th, and 3rd sharp.

At 06:18 AM 4/25/02 EDT, you wrote:
>Susan writes: 
> 
>>Now, cello intonation is melodic, not harmonic, and when
>>I first was studying tuning I couldn't even hear the beats
>>in a third (for a day or so ...) I just heard that it was
>>in tune. Nonetheless, when I first heard historical
>>temperaments (years later), I discovered that during
>>the cello-studying years I had developed
>>a very strong taste for what size intervals should be.
>
>Greetings, 
>    If I read this correctly, Susan, you are saying that intervals *should* 
>be a particular size?  Do you mean to say there is only one size for a
third? 
> When you double stopped, did you not aim for Just?  Or, does this mean that 
>when you were playing a third, you played it 14 cents wide?  I have never 
>heard a cello, in ensemble, play that highly tempered a third unless it was 
>really leading into some resolution. Otherwise, it sounds horribly out with 
>the rest of the group.  
>
> 
>>I can understand that people who have not developed their
>>sense of interval size or intonation as keenly (especially
>>the general public) could get a great deal from non-equal
>>temperaments. 
>
>    We have a mirror image of the perspective here.  I feel like my sense of 
>interval size was null and moot  for all the years that I meticulously(and 
>somwhat obsessively) made them all alike, and it wasn't until I began 
>appreciating the beauty of a more consonant sensation(often juxtaposed with 
>the expressive texture of more highly tempered intervals)  that I began to 
>think that size mattered!  
>    I haven't yet heard a string player that can play in ET when 
>unaccompanied, and in a string ensemble, playing in ET would be a disaster.  
>I have also been told by members of a string quartet that everything changes 
>when they move to a quintet with piano.  
>Regards, 
>Ed Foote (who likes to fret with my strings)  
>
>

Regards,
Don Rose, B.Mus., A.M.U.S., A.MUS., R.M.T., R.P.T.

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