Ric writes: << And you say they chose the Broadwood. Isn't that ET? Are you referring to specimens of Broadwood's best tuners as measured by Ellis ca 1880 and presented in his appendices of his translation of Helmholtz's "Sensation of Tone" ? (p. 485)---or what Jorgensen presented in Big Red?<< I, in no way, consider the Broadwood's as listed by Jorgensen to be ET! With C, F and G 5 cents sharper, the A# up 4 cents, D and D# up 3 cents, E down 2 cents,etc. This isn't anywhere near equal. the C-E is only 7 cents away from Just, there are three thirds that are 18 cents wide, etc. No, this is profoundly different from ET. >>Hipkins wrote numerous articles about the piano including the entry in Encyclopedia Britannica at the turn of the century. He claims to have introduced ET to the Broadwood firm in the 1840's even though James Broadwood had published an article on ET in 1811.<< J. Broadwood did say that all his pianos were tuned in ET, in 1811,(so I have read), but Hipkins, 40 years later, states that "they are tuning nowhere near ET". It is interesting that the "errors" in the tunings that Ellis documented are all such that the temperaments are still shaped just like the classical well-temperaments, only to a lesser degree. This,imho, rules out the chance that the errors were random, but rather, that they were intentional shapings of the completely equal tuning directly along the lines of historical practise. >>So it seems what you are suggesting is that when "99.9% have chosen the Broadwood.", they have chosen ET or more correctly an Early ET. << Umm, no. I think the vast majority of techs who have heard my class comparisons between ET and Broadwood or Coleman tuning,(they are very close to each other, inspite of their totally different methods of origin), distinctly hear them as different sounding tunings. The voice teachers didnt' have the comparisons, but when I tuned their pianos in a Moore and Co. they all reacted the same way, "Oh, this sounds so much warmer!" >>And I am wondering if you are asking them to choose this early ET over a machine ET. We cannot ignore the possibility the 99.9% may simply be turned off by the "cold sterility" of a machine ET and prefer a "warmer humanized" version. << My ET's in these experiments are produced by recording my aural tunings. ( I, early on, recorded my aural tunings on all the sizes of Steinway grands, continued to refine them through use, and those are what I used for these comparisons). However, the differences between the FAC and aural on large pianos with good scales is so small I have doubts of anyone finding the differences. Bill Garlick taught me to tune,(North Bennett in 1975) and at the time, I didn't realize much difference in that he liked a slightly narrower octave than most. David Betts, who was also teaching, seemed to prefer a little wider octave, and our learning took place under the influence of both of these philosophies. >> Now Ed is talking about people hearing the difference between a Broadwood ET and a modern ET. (machine ET I assume). Maybe we have to look into how the early attempts at ET sound, in other words tune by their instructions or methods.<< I will say it again, Technically, there is only one ET, but in practical use, ET is the temperament in which no differences can be perceived between keys, (we can't leave perception out of this). I believe that for virtually everyone, 1 cent varience in the widths of thirds will go undetected in musical use, (R. Brekne disputes that, but I will have to hear someone demonstrate that ability that to believe it). So, a horribly bent tuning can sound like ET to one that cannot hear differences, but that, imo, doesn't make it "ET". In Dallas, we will be comparing a non-ET to Dave Anderson's aural ET. (In Canada last year, at the CAPT convention, we compared a Victorian style of tuning to an aural tuning; same reactions.....) >>But when you say 99.9% like the Broadwood you are saying they like ET which in concept has nothing to do with WT. Once again, the Broadwood tuning is not ET by any modern definition, nor my own, nor the Guilds expectations. >>On top of that, there is little or no evidence to suggest WT had any influence in music history.<< In terms of influence, it might be of interest that the use of keys by Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and others for their keyboard works exactly mimics the widths of the thirds. ie, the widest third in most WT's is the F# or C#. These were the least used keys in those composers' work. The most consonant key was C or F or G. These were the keys used most often. The keys inbetween are used in increasingly lesser amounts as they approach F#. In other words, if you graph the composes use of the keys by the same order as the circle of fifths, you find that the graphs are almost exact copies of the graphs I have used to show the widths of the tonic thirds,(liner notes of the "Six Degrees" CD). Beethoven did favor Eb over everything else,but with that exception, you will see that his desire to use a key is inversely proportion to the WT levels of dissonance. The same correlation is seen with most of the other composers between 1700 and 1900. Chopin is also interesting. His key usage (aside from an obvious love of Ab), also produces a diamond shaped graph, but it is totally backwards to the others! So, even though it is a "mirror image", his preference for keys still correlates to the amount of tempering in a WT. As the use of ET became more established, we see a gradual leveling of key use occurring between 1880 and the present. Is this coincidence? I think not. I believe it demonstrates that composers chose the keys for a muscial reason. Doesn't it seem that if all keys were tuned alike in 1810, there would be a more democratic use of them at the time? Enid Katahn suggests that the remote keys were difficult to use for sonata form because it was impossible to "go somewhere" harmonically and then return to home without creating an unresolved feeling. This falls inline with the effects of dissonance. It is not relaxing to leave a more consonant key for a more tempered one, and then stop. I am sorry that Ric can't hear the differences in the temperaments, but a growing number of professional pianists and musicians are certainly hearing a difference. I think the progressive tech can make use of this, but those that naysay the direction will certainly not. To them, I can be of no use or help. Regards, Ed Foote RPT www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/ www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
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