[CAUT] ET vs UET was RE: using as ETD

[Laurence Libin]

Thank you for your patience in responding. I've been editing Patrizio Barbieri's work for Grove, so when we have time I'll ask him about all this.
Laurence
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Fred Sturm 
  To: caut at ptg.org 
  Sent: Monday, April 19, 2010 1:55 PM
  Subject: Re: [CAUT] ET vs UET was RE: using as ETD


  On Apr 19, 2010, at 10:47 AM, Laurence Libin wrote:


    It would be very useful to have a publication reprinting the documentary evidence Fred mentions. If there is one, could I have a citation? 

   Yes, it would be useful. Is there such a publication? Unfortunately not. Documents are cited and excerpts reprinted in a great number of articles (unfortunately mostly in languages other than English). One good overview is Patrizio Barbieri's article "Temperament - Historical" in The Piano - an Encyclopedia (Palmieri ed, Routledge 2003). Books in which evidence is discussed and sometimes quoted include Dominique Devie's Le Tempérament Musical 1990 (available  http://musicreprints.fr.fm/ ), Claudio Di Veroli's Unequal Temperament (ebook, http://temper.braybaroque.ie/), Barbieri's Enharmonic Instruments and Music 1470-1900 (2008) and Acustica accordatura e temperamento nell’Illuminismo veneto (1987) (to purchase, email illevantesas at libero.it), Mark Lindley's Stimmung und Temperatur (you'll need interlibrary loan for that - vol 6 of Geschichte der Musiktheorie, 1987, pp 109-331). Thomas McGeary wrote an article documenting German/Austrian tuning instructions 1770-1840 in 1989, in the Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society vol 15, pp 90-118. Michael Kimbell, as David Love mentioned, did considerable research in this area in Germany/Austria during a lengthy sojourn there. He had learned about UET from Jorgensen, and expected to find evidence of what Jorgensen was saying in sources in Germany and Austria. He found, on the contrary, utter unanimity in favor of ET in all the historical tuning sources he was able to gain access to.
  http://www.huygens-fokker.org/docs/bibliography.html#M is as exhaustive a bibliography on temperament history as I have found. Amazing the amount of research that has been done. 


    I don't doubt that pre-1880 Continental tuners (we can't know how many) often sought to make all keys sound alike on the piano, but whether their solutions measured up to ET is debatable; we have no way of knowing, and the imprecision of tuning instructions leaves the question open. 


  Well, here we need to look at the actual instructions and decide whether they are, indeed, as imprecise as some of us assume. For instance, I don't find Montal's instructions (1834) at all imprecise - in fact, I wish I had learned using his method rather than Braid White's. I think I would have learned faster and more precisely how to achieve ET. The instructions documented by McGeary are mixed, some much more precise than others.


    As for musical productivity, what are the national statistics and sources, or how do you define productivity? Amount of sheet music published or instruments sold per capita? Number of composers we today regard as important? 


  The latter.


    Considering that Britain was the major piano producer and that interest in intonation and enharmonic keyboards was strong there in the 19th century (Colin Brown, William Hawkes, Henry Liston, David Loeschman, T.W. Saunders, Thomas Thompson, not to mention a few in the USA), I'm not so sure which country's practice was exceptional or normative.


  The interest in those enharmonic keyboards and related issues are one of the things that make England very much the exception, far different from trends in continental Europe. BTW, Barbieri's book on Enharmonic Instruments (cited above) gives some fascinating info about those trends in England.


    I'm not even sure when Steinway definitively adopted ET; does anyone?


  I don't think there was any question of "adopting" ET in the case of Steinway. It was simply assumed to be established fact by the time Steinway's opinion made any difference in the world.


    And why should 19th-century tuners have been less apt to tune artistically than expert tuners today, for whom ET is a point of departure?


  But where is the evidence they did so? What does "tuning artistically" mean, today or then?


    By this I mean, for example, that octave stretching negates ET by definition, yet is often considered necessary for piano and music to sound well. 
    Laurence      


  If it is only octave stretching, then that is following what the ears tell us (listening to the interaction of partials) in expanding our temperament in both directions. Most tuners pre-1900 or so simply did that "intuitively" (according to what tuning instructions and advice tell us) without worrying about the precision of expanding the progression of 5th partial based intervals. We get the latter in instructions of the 20th century in the US. I honestly don't know what European sources of the 20th century say in that regard - haven't run across any. I'd be interested to know.
  Regards,
  Fred Sturm
  fssturm at unm.edu
  "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." Twain

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