[CAUT] WT intonation/violin

[Ken Zahringer]

That's a great story, Ed, and so illustrative of how musicians can respond.
I'll bet that if you had talked to them before the concert and suggested
tuning the piano in other than ET, you would have seen the same looks of
panic and terror that I have seen in that situation.  But the results speak
for themselves.

Last year one of our voice students did a baroque recital with harpsichord
accompaniment.  Before one of her rehearsals I told her that the harpsichord
was tuned in "a slightly different manner" that might be more appropriate to
her program (Young's Representative WT).  It was a real soft sell, and I
told her I would change it if she didn't like it.  After the rehearsal, she
was ecstatic.  "It was so much easier to sing to!"

If we can just get them to try it. . . .

Regards,
Ken Z.


On 11/6/07 10:55 AM, "A440A at aol.com" <A440A at aol.com> wrote:

> Greetings, 
>      I had an interesting experience last night.  I heard Carl Maria von
> Weber's "Grand Duo Concertante" performed by Peter Sheppard Skaerverd and
> Aaron 
> Shorr.  Lots of shared, isolated,notes between piano and violin, lots of back
> and forth passages, lots of big chords with the violin skipping up through the
> notes,etc.  Basically, an intonational tour de force.
>     They did not know the piano was in a Coleman 11 tuning, (I didn't know
> they were going to use that particular D).  Sooo..........  I was somewhat
> interested in what they thought, and after the program I asked.  The
> violinist's 
> response was, "I don't know what you did, but I really like it.  The way the
> harmonics lined up was perfect. I wish all pianos sounded like that".
>     The program contained a variety of other more modern music, and they both
> thought everything sounded fine.   The Coleman has a few thirds tempered 18
> cents, some are 10 or less. However, that is NOT what these two noticed!  It
> was, perhaps, the way that the slight changes in consonance and dissonance fit
> the score that von Weber wrote, or maybe, the significantly lower amount of
> dissonance overall, (which happens in well-temperament).
> 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> See what's new at
> http://www.aol.com</HTML>

-- 
Ken Zahringer, RPT
Piano Technician
MU School of Music
297 Fine Arts
882-1202
cell 489-7529