Greetings,
I wrote:
>> Mr. Good's preference of a particular tuning for Brahms isn't
> a reflection on any exact temperament as much as it is of his
> personal >aesthetic sense of harmony.
Richard asks:
>Sounds good but what are you really saying? Edwin Good liked a
> "well" (which he didn't specify) , but stated he didn't like a
> "very competent ET"
That is exactly what Edwin said.
>Sounds like he liked an exact temperament
>that wasn't ET, because he stated his tuner came back and
>"restored its rich lively tone." So does "his personal aesthetic
>sense of harmony" have nothing to do with "any exact temperament"
I don't know where this "exact" stricture on his preference came from. It
is very possible that he could accept any of a variety of the mild WT's.
He wasn't that specific, but doesn't need to be to convey the message he
wanted, and that was that his instrument sounded better when it was not in
ET. The distribution of the comma needn't be exactly the same to create mu
ch the same effect in these tunings. Whereas ET is much like the architect's
drawing, WT is more akin to the painter's output. Mr. Good prefers the
latter.
>? Don't tell that to Mr Good's tuner who tunes exactly every time.
I didn't know that. was that part of the article? If so, I missed the
"exact" stipulation.
> The arguments that temperament influenced music as far as
>history is concerned is coming to a rapid close. After each
>tuning scheme is finally translated, it is seen by tuners,
>musicians, musicologists, and music historians, that temperament
>doesn't really matter unless it produces wolves.
Many tuners would diagree. I have customers to whom it matters a great
deal. If you offered to tune their pianos in ET, for free, they wouldn't let
you do it, but will pay top dollar for a Broadwood's style of tuning. If it
didn't matter, why would it even be a testing point to join the Guild? There
are finer harmonic nuances than wolves.
Also, there is an increasing understanding of how temperament DID
influence music. From certain perspectives, it appears that the art of
modulation grew up around a predictable organization of unequal amounts of
dissonance in the keys. The most dissonant key of F# is the least used, B
and C# follow closely behind. The more consonant keys are most often used.
Is this coincidence? That statistically, key choice and the width of the
thirds in the WT's are linked?
If you plot keyboard music's distribution on the various keys between
1700 and 1850, and stack them up as a chart following the circle of fifths,
you will find a distribution curve that virtually mimics the same style of
third's charts from either J. Kantor or myself. This holds true for
Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Brahms. It is also interesting that
Chopin's compositions are also a mimic, but in reverse!
You will also see that each composer has a favorite. An example is
Beethoven and Eb, which he uses way out of proportion to the rest. Isn't it
reasonable to wonder if such a key, residing near the middle of the WT's
range, offered the greatest amount of compositional freedom? It is easy to go
anywhere from such a key, but if one started in F#, there is nowhere to go
that doesn't require an uncomfortable move back to the tonic.
It seems, (though I am not musicologist enough to find out,yet) that
ending a composition by modulating from a key of consonance to a more
tempered key was not usually done. It would create an unresolved effect in
the listener. In this respect, the highly tempered keys would pose a
problem. In the Meantone era, there are keys that nobody used. In the WT
era, we see a distribution that mimics the rising amounts of tempering in
the tonic thirds of the keys. We start seeing F# used more and more as the
temperament equalized over the late 1800's, and modern ET era (1900 on) music
is all over the map, showing no preference for any key. Doesn't this at
least hint at something going on between temperament and composition?
>When the so called Wells are put up against ET no one can tell the
difference.
Ric, I gotta disagree here. In comparisons between the two in many PTG
venues, non-Et was distinctly preferred over a state-of-the-art ET. In my
classes, after 90 minutes of listening to a WT, the previously accepted ET
sounds VERY different, (and "shallow" according to more than a few remarks).
In my lab at Vanderbilt, no one is left unstruck by the difference between an
ET and a Broadwood tuning!
Ric again:
>Now we hear that Edwin Good says he can. So if he can demonstrate
>he can tell the difference between an ET and the Well he prefers,
>I will gladly learn to tune the well he prefers because all
>musicians would want to hear a "rich lively tone" in their freshly
>tuned pianos.
Great! Now you are getting the idea. Edwin Good is already
demonstrating this, with his wallet! And so are many other customers, they
wouldn't dream of letting an ET-only tuner tune their piano because they do
not want an ET! There are more and more of these people all the time.
Any technician can make the decision on what they have to sell. My point
is that a tech may be able to earn more money if they can tune in a variety
of ways and understand the implications well enough to create a market for
themselves. I have seen this happen in two areas already, the WT tuner is
gradually acquiring more and more of the discriminating customers. An
analogy would be that we can sell more fruit if we have apples and oranges
and bananas than if we only have apples.
I wrote:
>> Simply switching temperaments doesn't automatically "color"
> the music to its optimum.
Ric answers:
>Ah the myth of "color" caused by temperament. Hmmm looks like
> you are now saying it (temperament) doesn't color
>music.............
That is not what I said at all. Lemme try again: I said SWITCHING
temperaments doesn't automatically color music to its OPTIMUM ! Temperaments
color music, switching them may or may not make an improvement for a p
articular piece or composer, or era.
>What is the big deal between the "typical Victorian tunings" (which was
never practiced, as
> research is revealing) vs a sloppy ET?
What research is revealing a lack of practise? Do you have something
more plausible than Jorgensen's interpretation of Ellis's documentation? if
so, I would like to read it.
And a sloppy ET has no organization to it. C-E may be the widest
interval, which puts it at variance with all the historical evidence of what
was promoted along the piano's evolution. Even the 1885 tunings vary ET in
the same general form,which is the form of all the earlier WT's. This isn't
the result of coincidental error.
> The modern machines with theoretical offsets will
> give a consistent temperament, but compare that with results from
> the original directions that guided the ear.
I have, and was surprised how close the aural WT's are to the mechanical
offsets from ET on good piano scales. In fact, if you really work at a
Kirnberger or Young, you can become quite consistant. I can only imagine
the really good tuners of 1840 were able to achieve consistant results.
Ric again:
>I think you will
> find, the aural tunings will give much more musical pleasure,
> especially the ET of Claude Montal of 1836.
Nope, not enough color...
Ed Foote RPT
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
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