Greetings,
I think it was Don that wrote:
>>It is my contention that the octave stretch style used has a much larger
>>affect on the sound of the piano than the often subtle differences between
> >temperaments.
Well, my experience leads me to disagree. Stretching the living
daylights out of an ET does nothing to create a harmonic texture in the
modulations. Everything is still beating the same. It certainly feels
"tenser", but ET feels tense in comparison to WT's anyway. The more stretch,
the faster the thirds or 17ths. Obviously, more stimulative, but still the
same non-changing haze of 14 or more cents beating everywhere. Regardless of
the stretch, there are no "points of rest" from the physical dissonance.
I have met people that don't register any difference between
temperaments, ET or otherwise, and those that feel it is one of the most
profound discoveries in their musical pursuit, so when the difference between
ET and say, a Young, is called "subtle", I have to wonder about the re
ception. We are talking about the WT difference between a 7 cent C-E and a
17 cent E-G#!! There isn't much subtle about this degree of contrast, but it
can escape the listener that is focussed on something else.
>The difference between sloppy equal temperament and a
> >careful equal temperament is rather hard to hear when playing music, but
> >the difference between wide octaves and narrow ones is quite noticeable.
ET, by its nature, is all out of tune, everywhere. So, a "sloppy" ET is not
all that distinguishable from a perfect one because you are comparing out of
tune with more out of tune. We can assume that the "sloppiness" creates
thirds that are wider than 13.7 cents, but this is not very noticeable if
kept to a cent or two extra here and there, especially if it is not following
the customary form that composers would have been familiar with. What you
have then is scrambled harmonic construction and the composers' carefully
crafted rises and falls of musical tension never occur. Of course the
sloppiness isn't noticed, there is no organization to any harmonic direction
the composer may have created and the music lacks the "character" made
manifest by the original harmonic components.
The resources of WT seem to be widely used in the pre-1850 music and
getting an appropriate temperament in use for this music can create results
that are only "subtle" to those that have yet to acquire a sensitivity to the
effect. Textural sensitivity is a learned skill, but I have seen so many
acquire it that those that don't recognize it impress me a being resistant
for non-musical reasons. To be sure, I have seen it rejected by a small
number of musicians that gave it a good try, so there is no right and wrong
here, just differences of taste. However, the difference of effect found
in WT is sensual, not intellectual, so the listener who is straining to
identify the trees is going to miss the forest.
Also, it might be of interest that stretching the octaves in a WT
doens't necessarily increase the beating of the more consonant intervals to a
level that is noticed,but certainly heats up the more expressive keys that
have thirds faster than ET to begin with. It can increase the effect, though
sometimes at the expense of clarity in the slower passages.
I would suggest that two pianos tuned in two wildly different stretches
compared to one tuned in a WT (that has at least 6 cents between its mildest
and most expressive thirds) will sound much more alike than either will to
the WT.
I also maintain that there is more musical "meaning" available from a
WT, it is a more complex arrangement and contains greater harmonic resources
due to its palette of consonance values. However, since "meaning" is a
product of a message being received and NOT a unique quality of the message
itself, the "meaning" is dependant on how the listener receives that message.
This makes the listener the greatest variable because it makes the "meaning"
of musical sound a function of both the listener's experience and ex
pectation. I can't do anything about the former, but the latter is certainly
dependant on today and is just as important.
Regards,
Ed Foote RPT
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