Greetings,
Fred writes:
>>Hummel notes the various
tuning systems published by several authors, and says that they were
more appropriate for earlier instruments (including early pianos with
bichord stringing). Because the "modern" piano has thicker strings and
more of them, he says a different tuning system is needed, one that is
easier to accomplish:<<
This is a very lame argument, (Hummel's, not Fred's). To change the
intonation in order to make it easier to tune doesn't address what is best
for the music! This is akin to saying that plastic soundboards are superior
because they are easier to make.
Given that the best tuners at Broadwood's were calling a well temperament
'equal' in 1885 should be indicative that what we call well-tempering today
was the norm before the turn of the century. Add to this that "Ludwig"
mentions being taught in Romania to tune a WT, in this century, indicating that
perhaps the traditional way of tuning was WT for far longer than the theorists
would have us believe.
Israel writes:
<< Thank you for the thorough and sensible exposition of the folly of trying
to definitively match specific tempering systems with specific figures in
music history. Or even specific time frames. The bottom line is -- it's all
conjectural. Just because some scholar publishes a description of a tempering system
on a particular date means little in terms of what actually was used when and
where... >>
Lack of proof doesn't render a theory invalid. It is hard to
imagine that the vast majority of tuning done before 1900 was anything but
irregular in the traditional manner, i.e., dissonance in the tonic thirds increasing
with the number of accidentals in the key signature. This is the common form
of virtually every non-ET temperament documented. It's reasonable to consider
WT the intonational palette of all the major composers prior to the 20th
century. Hummel may have written a theoretical approach, but I doubt he was more
capable in rendering the temperament than the professionals that came later,
and THEY didn't' tune anything like ET, even when it was advertised as ET.
When trying to arrive at the most appropriate temperament for any
composer, it is important to use the theory, history, and chronological placement to
arrive at a plausible range of temperaments, and then try them on the modern
piano. The important thing is that the tuning increase the emotional effect of
the music, and not call attention to itself. That means that there is a
limit when deciding how wide the thirds are allowed to be. This limit depends on
the instrument, (with the modern piano arguing for less dissonance than a
fortepiano or harpsichord), how the composer used the 'color' in the temperament,
and the audience's expectations.
Those expectations are the weird part. I have seen a professional,
classical, master-class teacher completely miss the difference between a Young and
ET, when the two pianos were side by side and the same passage was played by
teacher and student, repeatedly. I have also seen a non-professional decide
that the extremely mild Moore and Co. temperament was too alien for the music
they played. The difference between the two examples is that I said nothing to
the professional but gave a full explanation to the amateur.
This conundrum applies to string players, also. A professional violinist
just loved the Coleman 11 that he ended up being accompanied by, but was
surprised when told it wasn't ET. He said it was the first time that the overtones
of the piano were perfectly lined up. go figure.
The final arbiter is how it sounds; the chronological agreement of
composer and temperament is just a rough starting point.
Regards,
Ed Foote RPT
http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
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