[CAUT] temperament

[Fred Sturm]

On Apr 14, 2010, at 6:59 AM, Laurence Libin wrote:

> Just a small clarification, please: Do you mean that a skillled 18th- 
> century harpsichordist would not have adjusted a temperament to suit  
> the demands of the music being played?


I don't know the answer to that question. I don't assume that that a  
skilled 18th century harpsichordist would have tuned in more than one  
way. I think, from a practical point of view, and based on what I have  
read, that it is likely a harpsichordist would have learned a method  
of tuning, and would have simply followed it.
	It is, of course, possible to speculate as to what "someone might  
have done," but I haven't seen the documentary evidence that this  
happened (and I have looked at a lot of documentary evidence). I look  
at the tuning instructions Rameau published in 1726 (his description  
of Ordinaire), the instructions Werckmeister published in 1698, and  
lots of similar documents, and assume that they are representative of  
attitudes and practices. And what I see is possible variance of  
contour within patterns, but nothing to suggest that one would alter a  
tuning to suit a particular piece, or a set of pieces in a particular  
key, or anything of that nature. The variances have to do with whether  
one favors the diatonic keys more, or favors them less, with the  
obvious resultant effect on the more chromatic keys. I see a lot of  
acceptance of fairly random variability in the imprecision of the  
instructions. There is no hint that one should "do this in order to  
achieve this effect, for this situation."
	I guess I should amend that to note that Rameau does suggest that  
starting his instructions for Ordinaire on C with seven ascending 1/4  
comma fifths would lead to flat keys sounding rather bad, and that he  
says one should perhaps start on B flat in that case (1/4 comma fifths  
from Bflat to B rather than C to C#), which is a shift of the pattern  
to favor flat keys as opposed to sharp keys. But this is a pretty  
extreme pattern, barely tolerably circular. (Other, later Ordinaire  
instructions (d'Alembert and Rousseau in particular) have only four or  
five 1/4 comma fifths, so it becomes somewhat more circular. And one  
can speculate, as Lindley does, that some French tuners of the time  
shaded their 1/4 comma fifths a bit wider.)
Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
http://www.createculture.org/profile/FredSturm

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