[CAUT] ET vs UET

[David Ilvedson]

I have little experience with UET other than ET, but we all know if you tune pure 5ths you end up with the big bad wolf.   Hasn't piano tuning been a strive to reduce the wolf?   

David Ilvedson, RPT
Pacifica, CA  94044

----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Fred Sturm" <fssturm at unm.edu>
To: caut at ptg.org
Received: 4/23/2010 1:40:25 PM
Subject: Re: [CAUT] ET vs UET


>On Apr 23, 2010, at 6:25 AM, Dennis Johnson wrote:

>>  We have already discussed previously that tuning with a personal  
>> interpretation is probably the most "authentic" method.


>	I'm not sure I agree with that statement. This assumes the tuner is  
>actually and consciously making decisions in accordance with "taste"  
>rather than with "method." I would suggest that this is a late 20th  
>century phenomenon, and that for most of piano tuning history - shall  
>we say from 1840 to 1980? - the majority of tuners tried to achieve  
>the best equal temperament tuning they knew how, in accordance with  
>the rules and procedures they had learned. That is certainly what the  
>historical sources I have read lead me to believe.
>	Before 1840 (and before piano) is only different in that other  
>patterns were included besides ET. I find it impossible to imagine a  
>1/4 comma mean tone with a "personal interpretation," for example. Nor  
>a Vallotti. Some methods were less precise, as in French Ordinaire or  
>Werckmeister's instructions of 1698, but hardly a matter of "personal  
>interpretation." Instead, the decisions made would be to make the  
>diatonic thirds more or less just, with the result that the chromatic  
>ones would move in the opposite direction, more a practical decision  
>than an artistic statement.
>Regards,
>Fred Sturm
>University of New Mexico
>fssturm at unm.edu