[CAUT] ET vs UET

[Porritt, David]

We who concentrate mostly on the piano (fixed pitch) are not as aware of how other instrumentalists and vocalists use pitches for color.  One of my very favorite singers was Ella Fitzgerald who was the most musical singer I've heard.  She would sometimes intentionally hit a note a little flat for effect and it added color to the music.  In the strictest sense it was "out of tune" but it was intentional and created the color she wanted.  I can imagine that composers who grew up listening to modified meantone tunings used that color to the same effect.

Having said that, 70 years of hearing ET 99.9999% of the time, I do still hear even mild well temperaments as out of tune rather than colorful.  But having just been part of the performance of both books of the Well Tempered Clavier I can see that people who haven't listened to and worked very hard to achieve ET all their life did enjoy the difference that a Werckmeister III had on the music.

I was amazed at the ones that did notice, and the ones who didn't notice much difference.  There was little connection between the ones who really noticed and those with the most musical education.  That did surprise me.

dp


David M. Porritt, RPT
dporritt at smu.edu<mailto:dporritt at smu.edu>

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Ed Foote
Sent: Friday, April 23, 2010 11:14 AM
To: tannertuner at bellsouth.net; caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] ET vs UET

Jeff writes:
Do we not call out-of-tune chords "color" just because that is how someone else has described them? Where some hear varying degrees of "color", I hear varying degrees of out-of-tune because I haven't been brainwashed to hear it as "color".
What do you hear in a 14 cent third?  It must sound out of tune, because there is a lot of color in there.

Ed Foote RPT
http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html


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