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

[Paul Bailey]

Ric,		I tune well temperament because most performers and most 
audiences prefer to hear music played in well temperament.

I've done my homework, and I've conducted the comparisons of responses 
to historical and modern well temperaments. I have observed that 
professional pianists and teachers who despise well temperament actually 
prefer to hear a well tempered piano, AS LONG AS THEY
DON'T SEE THE LABELS.......

Orchestra musicians frequently comment that the piano has a singing 
quality, sustain and power they've not heard before; and that they are
much more comfortable with the intonation and ensemble.

  Some composers and composer-performers, some with international 
reputations, prefer to have well tempered tuning for the performance of 
their compositions, from ragtime to sonatas and chamber music, and opera.

So, this creates some interesting conflicts about who should be told 
what, and when, doesn't it?

I think Robert Wendell may actually be creating new temperaments, 
although his temperaments adhere to very traditional and conservative
values that have been practiced for hundreds of years.

I'm not so sure I'm actually creating new temperaments, but it's 
essentially impossible to know. Because my temperaments 'follow the 
rules'
in the outcome, but the bearing plans require tempering techniques that 
are not documented as having been known in the 18th and early
19th centuries....However, there is documentation of temperaments that 
were described with mathematical exactness, which have characteristics 
very similar to the characteristics of my temperaments. I think it's 
very likely that I have the 'modern' acoustical knowledge and 
mathematical tools to describe well temperaments that were practiced in 
the past - but the tuners of those times didn't have
the math and theory to describe what they were doing, and the theorists 
weren't good enough tuners to describe accurately what the tuners were 
doing.  I think it's likely that the the equal beating qualities may 
have been strong enough attractors that some tuners would have 
instinctively found their way to the same temperament(s) that I have 
described.

After all, my temperaments aren't very far off from, say the Young Rep. 
18th century, or some others I could name, but they don't quite fit
the mathematically elegant description of, say the Young temperament or 
Valotti's temperament. But my temperaments have elegant aural
bearing plans, self-defining bearing plans, bearing plans that of course 
work best if followed accurately, but still  produce appropriate and
balanced outcomes if a little error creeps in here or there.

See, what I think is that tuning was practiced in a pragmatic way. Well 
Temperament would have been tuned in the easiest, least stressful
way. Let the interactions of the tones define the path. It happens that 
this type of bearing plan produces excellent harmonic balance, and
also maximum equal beating and maximum synchronicity.  I'm not going to 
wait until somebody runs across this exact method in some musty dusty 
library....Oh, and yes, significant bits of these equal beating and 
synchronicity qualities do appear in several of the, er, 'legitimate'
  historical temperaments. So my 'inventions' - I don't think of my work 
as invention, I pay attention, and notice things - may be refinements, 
or may be reconstructions of actual practice, which was perhaps not 
exactly the same as theoretical description.

We can never know these things for sure, but we can tune temperaments 
and play music, and listen and observe.....

-Paul Bailey



On Friday, February 28, 2003, at 06:49 PM, Richard Moody wrote:

>
> ----- 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....
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives
>