what's with the new temperaments?(x post)

[Richard Moody]

----- Original Message -----
From: Ron Koval <drwoodwind@hotmail.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>; <caut@ptg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 10:37 AM
Subject: what's with the new temperaments?(x post)


> Maybe I should have called this post:
> What's wrong with the old temperaments?
>
> They are the best efforts of technicians and theorists of the
time, created > with the available tools.

    Which "best efforts"?  The best way (imho) to understand them
is to  and examine in detail how and why these temperaments were
created.  What was Young trying to obtain and how did that differ
from Valotti.  How then did the Young -Valotti come about.   What
were the objectives of Werckmeister.  Was he trying to get a wolf
less temperament starting with Meantone or did he start from
scratch?  What exactly was Kirnberger trying to do?  Do they say
they were after musical effects, or addressing one of the many
problems of "intoning" a 12 note keyboard?
    The answer to such questions  lie in the writings of the
theorists themselves.  Unfortunately most remain untranslated.
Obtaining the offsets as cents from ET came about in the 1950's
with slide rules and electric calculators.  Now they are much
easier with electronic calculators and spread sheets.  But the
offsets tell us nothing of the theory and objective leading to the
temperament.
    Some of the so called historical temperaments were solely for
ease of tuning by the casual player to avoid paying a trained
tuner.  Many were based on endless variations of adding pure 5ths
to Meantone to make it "come out" or "mitigating the wolf".   Some
seem they were concocted to give a wolf less temperament without
resorting to ET.  But to really determine what the goal was, the
writings of the authors of temperaments must be read, and for most
of us illiterate in all languages but one, they need to be
translated.
    What I have been keen on finding is how the factories tuned
their pianos from the period of 1760 to 1860.   Before 1760 pianos
were made in shops along with harpsichords.  Harpsichords were
expected to be tuned by the owner or player.   If it can be
determined  what temperament was used in those shops, that would
be a good indication of how the players tuned, and then of course
"what was heard" then.





>  Armed with spreadsheets, graphs, available pianos
> and willing musicians, a body of knowledge is slowly coming
together.
> First, graphs showed only the progression of major thirds. Next,
the
> interval of the fifth and minor third was added.  Finally
fragmenting off to
> the projected beat-rates of various intervals, ratios between
the m3/M3 and
> the difference between the m3-M3.

    I would like to see the historical evidence that historical
theorists were aware of and cultivating this m3-M3 aspect.  And
how do you define this?



>I'll post two temperaments below, that I'd like to get feedback
from
> those of you willing/able to give them a test.

These are modern rather than historical?     ---rm....