more on this temperament thing

[A440A@AOL.COM]

Greetings, 
  I wrote: 
|    Could Beethevon have composed what he did on Aaron's temperament?
Could Stravinsky have composed what he did on Bach's?  Could Partch have
composed what he did on a Young?   I say, no,  these composers relied on their
current state of tempering for their intonational components.

Ric responds; 
>>Maybe, (but I doubt it), for keyboard compositions, but for the orchestras
they didn't then nor do they now compose according to temperament.   
Temperament
is a only a concern of the keyboard. (Say did Partch compose piano pieces?
If not what does Young have to do with his music?)
 
      I was using the example of Partch in response to the question of 
influences on composition. Harry P composed for his own instruments, using 
his own temp. (53).  None of that would have been possible if he had obeyed 
the status quo.  
    As to the rest of the comparisons, they are specifically aimed at 
keyboard work, this is a piano forum no?  Orchestras don't play in ET at all. 
 

>> Keyboard music is only one part of Western music.  The rest of Western
music could care less how the piano is tuned. << 

   Ah, but keyboards are the most often used instrument where accompaniment 
is required, so its harmony is certainly a component in its utility.  If 
intonation is unimportant,  then we, as tuners, are not necessary.  


>>The concern of orchestras and choruses is intonation.  Beethoven and 
Strivinsky heard the music in their heads and wrote it out on music staves.  
The piano needs to be tempered to play this music, and the orchestra needs 
good intonation to
sound the way the composer intended.  << 

  And the keyboard doesn't?   

>>  They say Beethoven wrote music while on
walks in the woods.  It is hard to imagine that temperament had anything to
do with the Ninth Symphony or the Rites of Spring.<< 

   I don't think I intended to post that temperament considerations had 
anything to do with symphonic music, I actually thought I had excluded it 
from what I wrote.  
 
>>it is perplexing because you alluded that
Beethoven and Stravinsky would have been inhibited by an HT.<<

    Hmmm,  there seems to be a mis reading of what I posted. LVB inhibited by 
a non-equal temperament?  I would never have said that.  Stravinsky's music 
seems to rely on equality,  I don't know if it would have been created for 
anything else.  The point was that all along,  the intonation of the period 
had compositional influences on the periods' composers.  I don't see Gershwin 
as a composer that relied on wolf intervals, and I don't believe that Bach 
wrote the WTC meaning the ETC.  

>>Yet ET renders
even their orchestrial music when played on the piano very enjoyable.<< 

    Not to the majority of pianist that I have introduced to the 
alternatives.  They are of one voice, and that is that upon returning to ET, 
the music has lost a dimension that they have just recently  found.  There 
are a growing number of these 'enlightened' musicians, and my whole point is 
that the modern tech who only tunes one way will miss out on selling them 
what they seek.  
    The temperament movement has just gotten started, it shows no signs of 
abating. 

>>But if it is the scale you are blaming for the dead end, that is altogether
a different story.   Neither tempering nor intonation will give ideas of
what  new notes to add or old notes to do away with. << 

   I must totally reject this.  I have seen songwriters, and modern 
composers, go into new territory when given a new tuning.  I have seen 
numerous classical pianists express amazement at the sound of a appropriately 
tempered keyboard, finding new perspectives and new methods of playing, even 
to the point of playing things differently, regardless of what the tuning is. 
   

>>And without science
I don't think you will come up with any scale much less a better one, nor
can I imagine instruments built without science esp if you want out of a
harmonic detour. >>

    Yes, science is a wonderful thing, but my caveat was not to be blinded by 
it.  Trying to say there is any one tuning that will provide all the harmonic 
resources available from a piano is to accept a very limited tonal 
soundscape.  It may feel safer, but it is still a limited (by definition) 
viewpoint.  
   ET is not a "realized ideal".  It is more the result of the industry 
arriving at a place that excludes artistic interpretation of the scale in 
order to standardize a commodity, thus, Its benefits are mainly economic.  
Yes, there have been modern composers that utilize its particular harmonic 
nature, just as there have been composers that used their (then) current 
temperament to create effects. 
     If one choses to accept it as the  perfect harmonic arrangement, that is 
their choice, but I submit that it will become an increasingly isolated sound 
and in the future, 12ET will come to be seen as that curious 20th century 
tuning.  
Regards, 
Ed Foote RPT