[CAUT] liszt temp

[Dennis Johnson]

Maybe, but with some exceptions. There are plenty of beautifully romantic
examples that show his sensitivity and awareness of key color.  I also
suggest that musicians of his day would perceive a close ET or mild
Victorian tuning differently then musicians today due to our very different
conditioning of color from the past.  This can not be qualified in exact
terms, but should be considered.

I did a presentation here in the early 90's which included an analysis of
Liszt's 3rd Liebestraume in Ab showing nearly measure by measure examples of
how he treats intervals, especially of Ab and Cmaj. When the middle passage
briefly slips into B maj, it has an errie, soft effect. I can't go into
those details here, but my primary suggestion is that even if many of the
"best" tuners were actually tuning close to ET by that time, it does not
follow that therefore every composition sounds best to the composers feeling
or intent in ET.  I can not speak for Liszt, or his intent, but I can show
that he used effective compositional techniques that demonstrate an
awareness of color.  What we choose to do with is an individual call, but it
is there.

best,

Dennis Johnson
St. Olaf College
____________________

On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 4:16 PM, Ed Sutton <ed440 at mindspring.com> wrote:

>  While I don't know Liszt's music well, it doesn't strike me as the sort
> of music that would display temperament colors particularly well. He is
> especially interested in big sonorities that tend to overwhelm subtle
> colorations in close mid-range intervals. I'm sure he heard many kinds of
> tunings in his travels and long life, including lots of ET and reasonably
> close attempts at ET. Perhaps someone who knows his music well can correct
> my opinion.
>
> Ed Sutton
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>  *From:* Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu>
> *To:* caut at ptg.org
> *Sent:* Sunday, January 24, 2010 5:01 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [CAUT] liszt temp
>
>  On Jan 24, 2010, at 1:55 PM, G Cousins wrote:
>
>  Does anyone have an insight as to the temperament that Franz Liszt might
> have been using for his piano works?
> Nothing yet found in my research. I'm thinking some sort of pre-modern ET.
> Thanks in advance,
> Gerry C
>
>
>   I would say definitely ET. By the time he was first writing in Paris,
> the work of Claude Montal had pretty well established a very refined method
> of achieving ET, which had long been established as the norm in Germany,
> where refined methods were also available. That would already apply to his
> earliest works, and ET continued to become even more prevalent later. This
> is not to say that one can't speculate about the existence of variant
> methods during this time (and about degrees of accuracy and skill), but the
> overwhelming evidence for this time period (about 1830-1885), outside Italy
> and England, is in favor of virtually universal acceptance of ET - and of
> methods that allowed aural tuners to achieve it with considerable accuracy.
> Liszt was a prolific writer. Perhaps somewhere in his output of letters
> there is some bit of information about his predilections regarding tuning,
> but I don't think so. Otherwise, surely somebody would have trotted it out
> as an exhibit A. In fact, surprisingly enough, very few composers expressed
> opinions on temperament.
>  Regards,
> Fred Sturm
> University of New Mexico
> fssturm at unm.edu
>
>
>
>
>
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