[CAUT] ET vs UET

[Laurence Libin]

Surely tunings don't need to be defended and no one needs to feel defensive 
about them. One thing I've gained from this temperament discussion and a 
parallel one going on simultaneously on a clavichord list, is how 
differently people can conceptualize a common term. Even among formidably 
intelligent CAUTs, the term ET evidently carries various meanings, and to 
acousticians it means something else, and I suppose something different to 
neuroscientists studying music cognition . So, if I were commissioning an 
encyclopedia article on ET (not the space alien), who would I ask to write 
it? It's not a simple definition; you can appreciate the problem by 
comparing the discussions in the New Harvard Dictionary of Music and the 
1955 Oxford Companion to Music. If authoritative sources conflict, who's 
right? Can they be reconciled? Tune in next week.
Laurence


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Ilvedson" <ilvey at sbcglobal.net>
To: <caut at ptg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 2010 7:28 PM
Subject: Re: [CAUT] ET vs UET


> This has been said many times by Bill Bremmer and others on the List years 
> ago.   My ET tuning is just as accurate in practice as any Historical 
> tuning is in practice...so what?   It seems to be brought up as a defense 
> for  Historical tunings...I just don't understand that reasoning...?
>
> David Ilvedson, RPT
> Pacifica, CA  94044
>
> ----- Original message ----------------------------------------
> From: "Laurence Libin" <lelibin at optonline.net>
> To: ed440 at mindspring.com; caut at ptg.org
> Received: 4/20/2010 4:03:23 PM
> Subject: Re: [CAUT] ET vs UET
>
>
>>Yes; I was kind of hinting at this conclusion but didn't want to say it in 
>>this forum.
>>Maybe one reason fortepiano is better for you (what nerve!) is its milder
>>inharmonicity. That's partly why I prefer gut-strung violins.
>>Laurence
>>  ----- Original Message ----- 
>>  From: Ed Sutton
>>  To: caut at ptg.org
>>  Sent: Tuesday, April 20, 2010 6:43 PM
>>  Subject: Re: [CAUT] ET vs UET
>
>
>>  Laurence-
>
>>  Here's the problem: ET can't be tuned on the piano. Dan Levitan wrote 
>> some
>>wonderful articles in the 1990's in which he concluded that the best we do 
>>is adjust
>>selected partials to approximate what they would do in "real" ET, 
>>producing, in
>>effect, our best attempt at "imitation ET."  So we are asking "How good is 
>>the
>>imitation?" Not "Is it correct?"
>
>>  Consider, for a start, that a stack of 100 cent semitones would not add 
>> up to a
>>stretched, inharmonic, piano octave. A fourth or fifth with a wound lower 
>>note will
>>have a very different width than it's chromatic upper neighbor with both 
>>notes
>>plainwire, and the compromises to get them to sound similar (if possible) 
>>will be
>>different, then getting the thirds to progress will require a different 
>>compromise for
>>those strings, meaning now a higher level of interconnected compromises...
>
>>  It's always an approximation on the piano! A different approximation for 
>> every
>>piano scale design! But done right, it sounds like ET.
>
>>  By the way, I much prefer the sound of a string quartet to that of a 
>> string trio with
>>piano. Fortepiano is better for me.
>
>>  Ed Sutton