May the 4ths be with you

[Keith Jones]

Rick,
Well, obviously the problem is that you're playing the WRONG music. Judy
Collins???
I'm more of a Petula Clark fan myself. But seriously, I had my piano tuned
to a Young's Temperament for quite awhile and really enjoyed the variety of
sounds, mostly the thirds of course. I have the feeling that the composers
from before 1900 were aware of the colors of the keys and were quite crafty
about exploiting the potential of both the more consonant and the more
dissonant keys. The music I like to read through is mostly Bach, Beethoven,
Schumann, Schubert the usual suspects. Try the first chords of The G major
Sonata by Schubert, it's a different piece in Young's Temperament. There's
also some places in Scenes from Childhood by Schumann that make me think
that he was aware of the way the thirds sound. Sometimes a more dissonant
third followed by a milder third gives the impression of resolution that
just disappears in ET. Chopin is a bit beyond my playing ability and I
don't quite understand what he was up to yet. 
For me anyway using different Temperaments is an interesting way to open my
ears a bit.
By the way, I'm sure that there are many interesting things about digital
keyboards, I'm just too busy trying to figure out the old fashioned kind to
be interested in them.

At 11:24 PM 8/25/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>> To sum up, I think that different temperaments are almost
>unnoticeable to
>> the audience, but they can affect the players interpretation
>because the
>> player is more aware of the differently beating intervals.
>> Keith Jones
>
>
>    There is another aspect of HT's that is extremely interesting
>to me and that is the historical side.   I love research (which is
>why I ended up with a degree in history instead of music, I am a
>poor practicer) and researching HT's  is fun and exciting---well,
>OK, to me at least.  So when I came across the complete
>translation of Pietro Aaron's instructions for tuning Meantone I
>was ecstatic.   Being a piano tuner I was able to attempt it.
>Being a student of history I was able to see it in comparison to
>the other modern descriptions of it and tell who was closer to the
>depiction as written by Aaron.   Being an amateur musician I could
>practice a few pieces in it.  What a dream to go through the Judy
>Collins song book for example.  How some parts of Chopin sound
>exquisite in it.  I even dared practice some Two Part Inventions
>in MT.
>    While I like setting the temperaments of HT's it is a major
>chore to tune the rest of the piano.  Perhaps I should have a
>harpsichord.  Bach was said to tune his harpsichord in 15 minutes.
>What I would really like is a digital keyboard that has a choice
>of temperaments and can be programmed for even more.  But don't
>count on the accuracy. Go to  you local piano store and check the
>temperaments of the digitals.  You might be surprised.   ---ric
>