historical vs. equal temperament

[Tom Cole]

Douglas Hershberger wrote:
>
>    As an example, today I tried Young's Well-Temperament No. 2 on a
> Steinway L. I'm sure this temperament would sound better on say, an old
> Viennese style piano than a modern high tension piano. As I played it, I
> thought that it just sounded kind of dead and lifeless(boring).

I spoke with Paul Bailey over the weekend and he cautioned me that HTs
are an acquired taste and that it is better to experiment with one of
the very mild ones at first.

I tuned my first HT with one of the RCT choices - If I'm not mistaken,
it was also a Young Well-Temperament. A little _too_ Young, we thought.
It didn't improve with age either. Thus, having put way too much spice
in the pot, as it were, I am now forbidden to tune either of our pianos
to anything but ET.

 You
> could sure get color differences from key to key but why would you need
> so much.I'm not sure which temperament would have been used in Chopin's
> time but after listening to the simple keys, C,F,G, etc. maybe that is
> why he wrote in keys with lots of sharps. I realize that is all
> speculative but just my opinion.
>    I then retuned it in ET (this was a piano I was prepping for a
> dealer) and played it.

I am thoroughly steeped in equal temperament, no kidding about it. From
birth, my ears measured and recorded the intervallic spacing between the
notes of our well-tuned Steinway and this is the baseline from which I
now judge all tuning designs. Whereas most people can accept a +2 cents
here and a -2 cents there, I find this intolerable.

Having said that, I had the extreme pleasure of experiencing Horace
Greely's tunings on three occasions recently (Dubravka Tomsic playing
the Beethoven's 5th and John Louis Steuerman's two solo Bach concerts).
I was completely amazed and enchanted with what a wonderful experience
an historical tuning can be when employed with such wisdom and skill. He
had said to me that if you notice the tuning, then I have failed as a
tuner. With very close attention being paid to the tuning at each
concert, I could not tell what he had done that deviated from ET. But my
experience was that there was something very delicious and exotic about
the sound of the piano, and different each night.

It's very much the same as in cooking where you usually don't want to
notice the seasoning but the spices contribute to the overall flavor of
the dish.

>    So I quess my point is that there is a time and place for HT's and in
> my opinion the right instrument. 

The time and place for HTs, for my money, is on the concert stage where
the piano technician can study the scores, consider the peculiarities of
the orchestra and piano, and then decide what sort of temperament and
octave stretch would work the best. If it is not known what a piano is
being prepared for, then I can't imagine how anything but ET could be
justified.
If your spouse was cooking dinner, would you walk into the kitchen and
dump into the pot your favorite spice, regardless of what foodstuffs
were simmering therein?

> Is it just me or do others hear a lot of color
> variation and different flavor when playing the same song in different
> keys in ET? 

Absolutely. Every note on a piano has a different color, due to tuning,
voicing, regulating and pitch sensitivity, and when I modulate into
another key, I then have a different set of crayons to play with.

The piano sure sounds more alive and exciting to my ear when
> tuned in ET. I also get that impression from Jim's perfect fifths
> temperament.

I miss the "vibrato" of the thirds and sixths of the "easy" keys. The
beat speeds of all the ET intervals are burned into my permanent memory
and I get an "out of tune" error message when the beats are "wrong".

I plan on continuing to study alot more
> but I for one, would not just completely get away from ET. I am just not
> convinced it is more musical. I think tuning by ear, which I don't
> always do lets you adjust the thirds and sixths so they are not so
> harsh, more musical. The SAT or RCT may not even agree that it is a
> perfect equal-temperament but who is the judge, you or the machine.
>    Sorry to be so long winded.
> Doug Hershberger, RPT

-- 
Thomas A. Cole RPT
Santa Cruz, CA