Richard wrote.......................
>
>> 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.
I replied:
> I have customers to whom it matters a great deal.
ric
>asks.............................
>Are you saying your customers must have wolves in their temperaments?
No, not at all, unless you consider a 21 cent third "wolfish". These
customers like the palette of a WT, and the dissonance of the least used keys
is, if not always a feature, a minor bug compared to all keys tempered by 14
cents. But a wolf? at 19 cents? not to me, but perhaps others (in
particular, techs) find it too harsh to be worth the gain elsewhere. They
are certainly welcome to speak up about it.
Foote:
>>There are finer harmonic nuances than wolves.
Moody:
>We better define wolves, or agree that the direction of
>temperament is to produce less and less wolves.
In 1/4 comma, there is a 41 cent wide "third", that is a wolf. In a
Kirnberger or a Werckmeister, or even the well developed Young, there are
thirds that are 21 cents wide. Are they wolves? I suppose it depends on the
listener.
I would define a wolf interval any that are so tempered as to sound
unmusical. If it breaks the flow of the music, it is a wolf. That isn't some
refined and proven theory, just my personal definition.
The direction of temperament has always been towards increasing the
harmonic resources available to the musician. Temperament has never stood
still for long, its history clearly demonstrates this. From the rejection
of meantone to the clinically equal tunings we are capable of today,
temperament evolved in what appears to be a common form, gradually lessening
the differences between keys, finally reaching a point where there was
nothing about the nature of differently tuned intervals to talk about, just
how alike they were. I think something was lost in the "refinement".
Inre coloration, Ric replies...............
>
> Ok so you say "Temperaments color music" but SWITCHING
>temperaments doesn't automatically color music to its OPTIMUM!
>Well then, what temperament does color music to its optimum?.
That is what we are doing, finding out. How much tempering brings out the
best sound from the piano. There are no hard fast laws here, but your
audience or customers feedback lets you know how you are doing. One would
have to leave the security of ET to learn this...
>Can you explain to musicians and musiciolgoist and music historians
> how "Temperaments color music"?
Yes, and usually a lot more easily than they can explain to me why the
composers chose the keys that they did! The musicians seem to more readily
leap at the idea, the musicologists realize that this concept challenges a
LOT of notions. Certainly hard to do online, but in face to face with a
piano handy, we can generally get the epiphany pump working.
>Where is there color and where
> is there not color?
Hmm, there are "colors" everywhere in a WT. Color is poor choice of word
for it, "intensity" would come closer to what the tempering changes in a
given inteval.
The more remote the key, the more intense the thirds and more pure in the
fifths. This is a simple, easy to grasp concept of key character, ie
different levels of intensity in the harmony.
>If ET is not color, what is color?
A temperament is not 'color', the color is the degree of tempering in an
interval. In ET, since they are all the same, there is no contrast along the
lines of intensity. As far as relationships go, in ET, C is the same as F#,
the only thing changed is the pitch center. Some people with great pitch
recognition have particular "characteristics" assigned to particular ET keys,
but if you tune a piano in ET 1/2 step flat, all those characteristics will
"move up" one semitone and even though you are playing in C#, the listener
will tell you that they hear the "character" of the key of C. For this
reason, I think ascribing colors to ET keys is a by product of pitch
recognition, not one of various tonal qualities. I might be wrong there, but
so far, pitch is the only linkage I see with the idea.
>Can you tell us how to tune to get back the color that is not in ET?
Well, I thought I was trying to suggest ways we might do that. There is more
than one way to tune a piano, and in the last 10 years, hearing the
temperaments has become easy enough to attract a fair number of tuners. That
they are packed in so many of today's machines is a huge boost to their
accessibility. Being able to communicate what we find could teach all of us
much more than tuners of the past ever dreamed of.
>...............Ed wrote..................................
>
>>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 above sentence had some errors, should have read "vary from ET", and
"coincidental errors".
Ric asks.
>what form is this? and what is coincidential error?
The form of interval width following key signature that is found in
virtually all the published temperaments.
That tuners in 1885 were creating the same set of relationships, just more
averaged than before, indicates that the departure from ET was intentional,
and that they didn't result from simple errors in precision as they attempted
to create equality.
Ric asks:
>Ed, I would like to ask how you can say , "Nope, not enough
> color..." and ask if you have tuned according to Montal's
> instructions and if so how does the music sound.
>I have tuned according to Montal's instructions and I invite you
> to play any Chopin or Beethoven or any music you prefer on my
> Montal or anyone's Montal. I have tuned according to Montal's
> directions and and I am amzed at the ET that comes out.
No, I never finished Montal's tuning, and I don't think many in 1832
did. His book was for piano owners, to teach them how to tune their own, and
from what I have seen, the results may have been anything. His book
certainly didn't seem to have a lot of impact, since nothing more was heard
from Claude M for the next 120 years.
I did the next best thing, I asked Bill Garlick, who was one of the
first modern tuners to try the Montal directions. Bill related that the
result, if you really worked at it, was for all practical purposes a modern
ET. No third more than a cent or so away from ET. Not much difference
between the keys, it would seem. It is on the basis of that that I would be
wanting more contrast. Its in the journal, if I get in the mood over the
holidaze, I may go hack around on it, (though I have a pretty tight Paul
Bailey WT on the parlor Steinway, and I hate to chase it off..)
Regards,
Ed Foote RPT
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
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