temperaments (new tack)

[Ron Koval]

List, (or whoever's left reading this stuff)

I'm going to try a new tack here, so those of you going for the ride, watch 
your head as the boom swings around.... (hey, it's sunny and warm in 
Chicago, work with me!)

I started this discussion, to recommend trying some alternate tunings 
created by people still living.  We shifted focus to the tunings of the past 
with the suggestion to try the Moore and the Broadwood's Best, from 
Jorgensen, because of their successful track record.  Then we shifted to 
what is and what isn't ET, based on the historical record.  That brings us 
to:

<snip> from ric M
How tuning was done in 1845, or 1870 can be
ascertained if one researches the historic record of the tuning
instructions written at that time.
    Ellis gives the methods (of how the tunings were implemented)
used by Broadwood and Sons those used by Moore and Moore.   The
two pattern are different yet they both strived for ET.  Ellis
measured the results and presented them in a table titled,
"Specimens of Tuning in Equal Temperament".
<snip>

JIBE HO! (that's the warning to duck, now)

Let's take this at face value, and just assume there has been a continuous 
developing of ET, yet all of the tunings fall under the ET umbrella.  What 
I'm proposing, is that during this deveopment, as tolerances have tightened, 
tuning has lost the 'art', and become more sterile.  To go back to an 
earlier version of ET holds the possibility of making a more 'musical' 
tuning.  Since these are all ET, and the aural directions are out there for 
these older forms, try tuning either the Moore, or the Broadwood's Best 
(someone else fill in the page #, please) on a piano of your choice.  Test 
the tuning by playing music from many different times.  No fair using modern 
test intervals to say whether it's a good tuning or not.  If you don't play 
well enough, enlist a willing pianist.  Then let us know which is preferred, 
the modern ET, or the older ET.  This would even be better in a place with 
two pianos, so you could go back and forth between them.

Join the adventure!

Ron Koval
Chicagoland


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