Temp. comparisons:

[Billbrpt@AOL.COM]

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In a message dated 8/30/02 8:33:08 AM Central Daylight Time, 
HazenBannister@cs.com writes:


> I think this falls into the same kinda thing as the perfect pitch thread I 
> posed a while back.You learn different intervals in ear training, and 
> different relationships, not so much how they are tempered.I guess 
> most musicians I have run across,are more interested in the overall 
> performance of the piano,and the execution of the piece,than what 
> temperment the piano is in,given that the piano is in some kind of good 
> tuning.I enjoyed the different temperments at the Chicago convention,could 
> I recognize them now by hearing again,most definitely not.When I played 
> thirds going up,it was definitely different,as you said,that had to be 
> noticed.But when I played a piece,it sounded wonderful,but you couldn't put 
> your finger on what was different. 
> 

Your line of thinking is so much like what everyone believes, a kind of 
mixture of fact and assumption of things that were never true.  I studied 
music theory in college too.  We were taught that 4ths and 5ths were 
"perfect" and that 3rds were an "imperfect consonance".  We were taught 
absolutely *nothing* about temperament, and neither is anyone in any music 
theory class, so when the word, "equal" at some point comes into the picture, 
the assumption, of course is that the word "equal" itself is not even 
necessary to use, it is redundant.  All temperaments are presumed and assumed 
to be "equal", always have been, always will be.

So then, someone comes along and says something about an "unequal 
temperament".  It immediately provokes the raised eyebrows, the frown, the 
shaking of the head, the "No, that's wrong" reaction.  The same kind of 
reaction you'd have if you were a passenger in a car and you saw that the 
driver was going to run a red light, "No, Stop!  *Unequal* temperament?  
Wouldn't *that* be what the customer doesn't like?"  Wouldn't the artist 
reject it?  Wouldn't it sound wrong, ruin the music?  Or, as a benefactor of 
our local opera company pointedly asked me, "Wouldn't an *unequal* 
temperament throw the singers off???!!!"

I got a letter once from the PTG President saying something along these 
lines.  The very notion of "going around tuning *unequal* temperaments was as 
repulsive to him as the most vile, immoral and uncivil thoughts or actions 
imaginable.  I remember reading comments from you that said to me that such a 
thing was imponderable.

Yet, as you have seen and heard for yourself, there are such possibilities.  
Moreover, if you believe anything at all of what I have said, you'll realize 
that temperaments which people firmly *believe* to be "equal" aren't 
necessarily equal at all, nor have they ever been consistently.  It's all 
been an assumption, all along.

So, authors like Isacoff who claim that music as it exists today could have 
only existed *beause* of ET are simply blowing smoke.  It is not true at all. 
 The music we have today and from past centuries has nothing whatsoever to do 
with temperaments which are "equal", certainly nothing to do with "each note 
unequivocally equidistant from each other", as Isacoff postulates.

Welcome to the enlightened group, those *liberated* from the lie that has 
been told for 3 centuries.

Bill Bremmer RPT
Madison, Wisconsin
 <A HREF="http://www.billbremmer.com/">Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . c o m =-</A> 

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