what's with the new temperaments

[Robin Hufford]

Hello Ric,
     I did try to distinguish the early forms of ET, considered by many
commentators to be, essentially,  rough attempts at equality from the
present form which I refered to as the modern kind of ET.  This latter
form is, as I said,  the outgrowth of  increasing skill accumulating in
the tuners over time.  .
     As I am rather poorly informed, in general, as to the history of
temperament - whether of the various forms of HT's or ET itself,  I
hesitate to post comments in a public forum, and ask that they be taken
for what they are -  merely, a hesitant, casual, first effort at
commentary on a rather diffuse subject.  Nevertheless, I think I am on
solid ground in insisting that if the question is the usefulness or lack
thereof of the harmonic values of  various systems of temperament, equal
or unequal,  and the nature of intervals themselves,  then the tuning
characteristics of ensemble playing instrumentally, or of vocal music
should be given preeminence in any generalization as to the natural
tuning preferences in temperament systems, in contrast, to
generalizations derived from the temperaments themselves.
     The nature of these preferences are best discerned in taking note
of the intervalic tuning in freely tunable instruments and the voice
itself, of course, in combinations.   Here, as I indicated last week,
the entire concept of key color is an isolated sophistry emanating from
keyboard work itself, and not in any way central, as far as I can tell,
to music.  The range of these preferences, in my experience, is almost
always in the direction of reduction, where possible, of the dissonance
of ET values of intervals and this, whether one listens to highly
skilled orchestra players, trained singers in vocal work, double or
triple stops on the violin or other string instruments, and, especially
telling, musically untutored, untrained individuals that are asked to
sing a tone or tones above a bass note.
      Such individuals will  arrive, with a little prompting to sing, at
tones that are in clear intervalic relationships, usually, the third,
the fifth, fourth, sixth, or octave, or their compounds,  above the note
without any training whatsoever, even if their tuning is unstable.  This
will  happen with the individual being entirely unconscious of the fact
that he sings an interval that has a harmonic relationship to the bass
note, for the person does not need to know any of these things,
something that is always a source of wonder to me, and suggests, what
seems plain to me, the intrinisic nature of these intervals, among
several,  to human consciousness.
     Furthermore, the same can be done by completely untrained children,
who may be as young as a year and a half, or so, just beginning to walk
and talk.  What is aimed at in these cases, although perhaps realized in
a variable fashion, are the just intervals, devoid of artificial
constraints.
     Having said all of this I think the contrast of key color that
exists in various temperaments is, nevertheless, a  useful and
interesting thing, although, in the larger scheme, an artifice, as I
indicated earlier.  As such, I would argue, that we should be aware that
it is, indeed,  a secondary  phenomenon, incidental in a way to the
fundamental nature of music, and that generalizing from this as a point
of departure for musical questions may lead to doubtful conclusions.
     I don't know very much concering the evolution of temperament but
would say from a musical perspective that had the octave been divisible
by three exact major thirds, and were it capable of being fitted into by
the just values of the other intervals,  which of course is
mathematically impossible,  then the complexities of temperament would
not have evolved and such speaks again to the immaterial degree of its
fundamental utility.
     I have heard music rendered in various temperaments and played on
such instruments.  In general, as perhaps would be expected from early
commentary, I found the improvements to be the improved sonority of keys
in which the thirds and sixths were less "out of tune", that is,
tempered to a lesser degree.
Regards, Robin Hufford

Richard Moody wrote:

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