Greetings, I wrote: >Acoustically, thirds and fifths work in opposition to one another, which >generally means that in the traditional form of well temperament, the keys with >the most highly tempered thirds will have the purest fifths, and the keys with >the purest thirds will have the most highly tempered fifths. It is overly >simplistic to regard a given key as highly tempered or not. > If performed on a well-tempered keyboard, this harmonic contrast can be >heard in Chopin's music, where he often places a pure melodic line above a very >expressive harmony, creating a subtle musical texture that is unavailable in >20th century tuning. David asks: << Do you have a sound source for your take on this? Some Chopin in this temperment?>> Naw, On our 6 Degrees CD I decided to go totally experimental and used a reversed WT for the Chopin. HOwever, I have several customers that play a lot of Chopin and they were struck by how much less "crowded and blurry" (their words) Chopin's music sounded on a normal WT, (usually keeping the F#-A# less than 18 cents.) So much of his writing keeps the left hand busy with alternating notes that the tempering's effect is not one of dissonance but higher energy and increased expression, (not unlike Bach's writing in the C# prelude of the WTC 1). Coleman 11 or Broadwood's "Best" is all it takes to show the difference, though the Young temperament really cleans up the sound. There is no sense in me convince others that any temperament does anything. All I would hope for is that the inquiring technician place one of these tunings under the hands of an accomplished pianist and make decisions based on the sound that results. I find that the less I say, the more the musical difference is perceived as a benefit. If I try to "sell" a pianist on something new, they are usually resistant before they even hear a note. Fear is a terrible thing to make decisions on! Also, Emmanuel Ax didn't say a word about the non-ET tuning on the concert pianos when he gave a master class here last week, just that the brassy piano seemed weak in the fifth octave. Regards, Ed Foote RPT http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html <BR><BR><BR>**************<BR>A Good Credit Score is 700 or Above. See yours in just 2 easy steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1218822736x1201267884/aol?redir=http://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/default.aspx?sc=668072%26h mpgID=62%26bcd=febemailfooterNO62)</HTML>
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