what's with the new temperaments

[Richard Moody]

----- Original Message -----
From: Robin Hufford <hufford1@airmail.net>
To: Pianotech <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 2:55 AM
Subject: Re: what's with the new temperaments


>that ET is "just another HT" and that both have a use.  I do
> think, however, that the very precise ET, at least in the piano
and
> harpsichord used in this day and age,  is a by-product of the
>increasing  skillset accumulating now for close to ten
generations >among  professional piano tuners and correlates
substantially with >their(our) early development.

> Regards, Robin Hufford

While I would go further than "just another HT".  ET has its own
history and deserves its own name like "early ET" or "historical
ET.
    ET evolved, and perhaps still is evolving.  The development of
ET has a long and fascinating history---the study of which has
only begun to scratch the surface.  Consider that 90 percent of
the historical record of tuning has not been translated (into
English).
    This is evident when whole books such as Montal published in
1830's "are discovered" in the 1970's, or the writings of the
English themselves languish unread in numerous magazines of the
18th and 19th centuries. What is stored on microfilm in the
Library of Congress would take months to go through.  Nothing from
the French or Germans has been translated.  We don't know what
Werkmeister or Kirnberger actually wrote.     We have the cents
offsets but are they accurate to the author's actual words, and
who decides this?
Music historians, musicologists?  Sure, and better if they have
also been trained as piano tuners especially by ear and even
better if they can play enough to highlight what they have tuned.
    As an example, the directions by Pietro Aaron have finally
been  translated.  All two pages.  Here we see how harpsichord
players were instructed to tune their instruments.  With the
emphasis on pure 3rds we can conclude Meantone, and from the
theory of Meantone give a cents scheme which then can be
programmed into ETD's.  But when you read the original aural
instructions, some ambiguities are immediately evident, so, if you
only read them that is what you will be stuck with. Would you read
a recipe for making pasta in 1520 but not try it out ?
      But if you follow the instructions and actually tune
according to them it is a different level both in understanding
and experience of history.  The results might be different from
the cents interpretation, but Aaron did not tune by cents back
then.   And this gets into how systematic schemes while trying to
produce uniformity, had more variance in practice then on paper.
This is because the systems themselves were evolving.  Aaron's
scheme seems crude to what we know today about how meantone should
look in theory on paper and in cents  but tuning according Aaron
himself is as close to history as you can get.
    The same goes for the ET schemes.  We now have James
Broadwood's instructions from  1811, Hipkin's comments from 1840,
and Ellis's direct measurements of 4 of Broadwoods tuners 1880.
He also gives the two procedures used by manufacturers Broadwood
and Moore and Moore.   These are examples of historic ETs  or
early ETs.
If one only reads them or about them, a limited but nevertheless
useful insight can be gained.  How ever if one takes up the tuning
hammer and tunes according to them, we are that much closer to
what was heard in those times. We can also get an idea of how much
they might have varied from tuning to tuning.  Without the 3rds
checks we moderns expect variance.  However until we actually try
aural tuning according to the original instructions we are only
speculating.  Hearing how the music sounds when played in one of
these historic or early ET renderings certainly beats speculating
about how and were the "colors" might-
should-maybe-not-perhaps be.       ---rm