[CAUT] WT intonation/violin

[A440A at aol.com]

Jim writes:

<< Is there a chance that another piece might NOT have "lined up" with this
temperament? Did you just get lucky?<<

       I go on the assumption that anything written before 1900 was written 
with an understanding of a general usage of tonality, ie,  the use of tempering 
variety to assist creating the mood the composer is aiming for.  For music 
that was not written in that era, the variety doesn't help or hurt, ie, it is 
basically transparent in music not written to take advantage of the pattern.  
    Once my ear became familiar with well-tempering, ET sounded anything but 
smooth.  It is a very buzzy sounding tuning. There is tempering everywhere!  
In order to create as much dissonance as exists in ET, a WT composer would have 
to stay in the mid to highly expressive keys, most of the time.  Which they 
rarely did, and when they did there, it was for expressive effect, which was 
heightened by its contrast to all that sweet harmony of the nearer keys, where 
EVERYONE spent most of their time., (except Chopin).  The more highly tempered 
thirds become consonant lower on the keyboard, whereas the "smooth" ones 
become dissonant, (function of the difference in the critical band).  
       
  
>>I'm always worried that a piece
will not be in the "smooth keys" (my words) and go opposite of what you
wrote. >>

       Composers didn't usually live in the "smooth" keys.  They wrote music 
that ventured out of them, often in incremental steps, before resolving back 
into consonance, (gross oversimplification, I know).  This rise and fall of 
dissonance is logical, and the Coleman tuning supports it without ever getting 
wolfish.  And smoothness isn't everything, (and hasn't been since the Meantone 
era).  There are extremely musical sounds in a highly tempered 17th, for 
example.  It allows a near-vocal vibrato to be produced on the keyboard. Remote keys 
also have pure fifths, so the capacity for consonant and sedative, as well as 
tempered and highly charged emotional involvment is there.  
       
          You can play anything on this tuning without it sounding "out".  
The classical definition of poison is "too much".  Same with tempering.  The 
Coleman tuning is a great balance between the evenness of ET and the palette of 
WT.  Nothing in it is "too much", but the harmonic texture of the music sure 
hits a lot of musicians in the right place. 
Regards,

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>