[CAUT] using as ETD

[ed440 at mindspring.com]

In a WT, a triad with a less tempered third will have a more tempered fifth. 
Add to this that slow beats tend to have less relative amplitude within the overall sound of the interval - for example it is difficult to tune a perfectly pure fifth because as the interval approaches purity, it becomes very hard to hear the beat - therefore the highly tempered fifths can exact a high cost, such as is typically found in the D-A fifths of WTs.

I will suggest that on the piano, in nineteenth century piano music, there tends to be a range of perceptual boundaries within which we hear the thirds. Too slow and we notice, too fast and we notice. Otherwise they don't intrude on our perception. A similar boundary applies to fifths, with the result that, say, something like a Moore & Co WT is acceptable, and not particularly easy to discern from ET.

Much more than that becomes (to me) uncomfortable and distorting of the piano sound and musical effect.

I often find (or think I find) the slight irregularities of M & C WT pleasantly stimulating. My own aural tuning of ET no doubt has similar irregularities (hopefully just a little less!), and I like to believe it is pleasing in a similar way. I claim no reasons beyond that. It is like the difference between a hand floated plaster wall and a sheet rocked wall.

If, as Ed Foote says, certain performers can "shade" the harshness of the chromatic keys in WT, why not do the same in ET to produce the "effect" of wider or narrower intervals?

I am so glad the piano sounds so good either way. But that is because I pay a lot of attention to voicing when I tune!

Ed Sutton


-----Original Message-----
>From: Ed Foote <a440a at aol.com>
>Sent: Apr 17, 2010 2:33 PM
>To: caut at ptg.org
>Subject: Re: [CAUT] using as ETD
>
>Greetings, 
>   I wrote:
>
>
> A major change is one of greater overall consonance in music, which removes some inherent harshness caused by ET.  
>Fred replies: 
>
>
>>Not to pick nits, but this is only true if you play in the more diatonic keys. If you play in the keys with more sharps or flats, there is more harshness than in ET.
>
>       As one pianist familiar with the WT's said, "One can decide whether the tempering is to be played harshly or expressively".  High tempering affects technicians differently than it does music lovers. I don't hear it as harsh, anymore.  
>      The only waythat a WT will cause as much overall dissonance as ET is if all 24 keys areused the same amount, and that does not happen in Western literature.  There is only a certain amount of dissonance to be had.   If it is spread equally, you will hear more dissonance in most piano music because in the entire amount of music composed between 1700 and 1900, there is a lot less remote key usage and a lot more diatonic.  In this repertoire, any well temperament or tuning that even shares the form, will cause there to be less total dissonance than in ET.  Yes, there will be points of higher tempering than the 14 cents, and oddly enough, it seems that composers made the higher tension musically useful.  "Expression" I think is the term. 
>Regards, 
>Ed Foote RPT
>
>