Brown bag temperament test

[Brad Lehman]

I'll second the recommendation of Dr Duffin's fine book...and it only 
takes a couple of hours to read, with his clear and straightforward 
writing.  The book:
http://www2.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall06/006227.htm
Duffin's web page of listening examples, soon after the book:
http://music.cwru.edu/duffin/Norton/Letter.html

Plus, if we're comparing: Vallotti is one of the relatively crass and 
unsophisticated (while remaining useful) temps, compared with the 
Neidhardt and Sorge and Bach temps that allow two *different* sizes of 
tempered 5ths.  1/12 and 1/6, not only 1/6 as Vallotti has.  I'm not 
terribly fond of Vallotti anymore, because it sounds so lousy in F#, and 
worse in Db and Ab.

A few weeks ago in California, I did a lecture/demo where I had two 
harpsichords set up in four different temperaments.  Regular 1/6 comma 
and Vallotti were on the two manuals of one harpsichord, and the Bach 
and equal were on the two manuals of the other one.  I played a bunch of 
musical examples on all four of these, and spent quite a bit of time 
playing a "Twinkle twinkle little star" harmonization in the four keys 
of F major, Ab, B, and D.  People afterward said this was tremendously 
ear-opening.  They also remarked that the dull sameness of equal grew 
old rather quickly, next to the liveliness of these others....  Regular 
1/6, Vallotti, and the Bach all have the same naturals F-C-G-D-A-E as 
one another; it's the handling of the other six notes that really make 
the big differences of character.

The "Twinkle" arrangement is printable from this page:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/affekt.html
The lecture and concert notes from that week are here:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/2007mar13.htm

One of my papers about all this stuff, from thinking about these scales 
from a Do-Re-Mi standpoint:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/art.html


Brad Lehman
http://www.larips.com


piannaman at aol.com wrote:
>   Ed, Jon, List,
> 
> Some musings on the subject...
> 
> I'd be really interested in hearing more different types of temperaments 
> compared on different types of pianos.  A class comparing many different 
> tunings might good for a convention offering.  I'd certainly attend.
> 
> Take, say, 10 pianos and tune them using various historical 
> temperaments, and one to ET.
> 
> Only two or three "master tuners" would know which pianos were tuned 
> using which temperament.
> 
> Another panel of HT experts would try and figure out which piano was 
> tuned which way.
> 
> The rest of us could have fun and learn alot.
> 
> Yesterday one of my long-term clients gave me a copy of an book review 
> of "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and why you should care)" by 
> Ross Duffin from the Wall Street Journal.  While I haven't read the 
> entire article or the book, the title makes it clear what it's about. 
> 
> I explained the ongoing debate to my customer, and she was fascinated.  
> I proceeded to tune the middle two octaves C3 to C5 on her ancient 
> Brambach Baby using a Valotti Well as prescribed by Tunelab while she 
> did crossword puzzles in the kitchen.  I played her a string of major 
> chords, and her face went from smiley at an F triad to scrunched up in 
> puzzlement at the F# triad. 
> 
> I ended up tuning to ET, but the merits of other temperaments shouldn't 
> be overlooked.