<HTML>In a message dated 12/20/02 9:30:43 AM Pacific Standard Time, Richard.Brekne@grieg.uib.no writes: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">Hi folks... got this question in from my friend Alex Galembo and am posting it as per his request. Anyone with good advice can either post to the list or write to Alex using the email address below Cheers RicB Alexander Galembo writes : My friend, a piano technician from St. Petersburg, Russia, wrote me asking me whether I know anything about some specific "Chopin pure interval tuning" or "Chopin temperament" - But I never heard about that. Do you have any knowledge in this specific quesstion?field? I am not at the piano technicians list presently, so I cannot ask the list myself, more that I even don't know how exactly it is called in English. I tried internet, but did not find anything- Alexander Galembo, Ph.D. Visiting researcher Dept. of Speech, Music and Hearing Royal Inst. of Technology Stockholm, Sweden E-mail:     alex@speech.kth.se WEB:        http://www.geocities.com/galembo_alex/ -- Richard Brekne </BLOCKQUOTE> I'll do my best to answer this question without being flippant or inflammatory since I respect Dr. Galembo and know that his question is serious.  If you think my response is worthy, you may forward it to him. The truth is that it is not known exactly which temperament or temperaments Chopin may have used since he did not write about that subject.  Many famous composers did not write anything about temperament use, so this frustrates those of us today who would like to make the music sound as authentic as possible.  It must also be said that the pianos Chopin used, reportedly Pleyel and Broadwood were precursors to the modern instrument we know today.  With that in mind, it may be said that no matter what we do, we are presenting some kind of altered or modernized version of what Chopin or any pre-20th Century composers may have produced. We can only assume that Chopin was exposed to the temperaments in use during his time. He lived from 1810 to 1849.  This was before the Victorian age whose very mild temperaments many people like to use for his music today, usually but not always with success.  It was during the era of Jean Jousse who was highly critical of many people of his time's attempts at trying to tune Equal Temperament (ET). During that time, there were some people of which Montal was a good example who were advocating and trying to tune ET.  The problem was that there was not enough good information available at that time to really permit a true ET to be effected. Therefore, many tuners, believing they were tuning ET ended up tuning a Quasi Equal Temperament (QET) ("quasi" means "almost"). The fact that these temperaments were not quite equal meant that there were tonal effects being produced whether they were recognized or not. Today, most of us believe that Dr. William Braide White's book, "Piano Tuning and Allied Arts" (from the early 1900's) provided adequate information for truly effecting ET.  I have long disputed this claim.  I believe that not until around 1980 with a combination of the identification of the 4:5 ratio of Contiguous 3rds, the PTG Standardized Tuning Exam and the perfection of Electronic Tuning Devices (ETD) for piano tuning were Piano Technicians truly able in large numbers to tune ET. Those people who tune pianos today but who have not mastered the finer points and who do not have or do not know how to program an ETD well and properly or are not able to aurally correct erroneous program results will often create a QET or even the inverse of a Well Tempered Tuning (WT), anywhere from just very slight nuances to blatant backwardness.  As you know, I have often talked about this and call it "Reverse Well" (RW).  Jean Jousse was the first person whom I have found who identified it although he did not give the tendancy to make this error a name or label. Owen Jorgensen recently wrote an article in the PTG Journal which cited Jousse and the QET's which he disliked.  (I personally think there can be great value in the choice of a QET when the time is right).  In it, he used the very same quote from Jousse which I had selected a few years previously. [From my website] "ET...has the following disadvantages: ... it cannot be obtained in the strict sense as may be proved, not only mathematically, but also by daily experience; therefore the best equally tempered instruments are still unequally tempered, and, what is worse, often times in [the] wrong places." So, Chopin may have been exposed to many different types of temperaments.  It may even have been that he never heard the same one twice. I strongly suspect that what is referred to above, the "Chopin pure interval tuning" or "Chopin temperament"  was something Chopin never heard but today's technicians on modern concert grands have found works well for Chopin and thus they have labeled it the "Chopin Temperament".  It is none other than the controversial Equal Temperament with Pure 5ths (ETP5). While I personally have as much to criticize about this temperament as Jousse did about the QET's, I reluctantly admit that it can and does work well for Chopin on the right piano under the right circumstances. Chopin's music reflects a departure from earlier composers who most often chose to write in keys with fewer sharps & flats.  Chopin often wrote in Ab and Db (4 & 5 flats).  These keys are usually considered too harsh in many earlier temperaments.  But Chopin wrote many wonderful melodies and harmonies (using 10th & 17ths) in these keys.  There could be more than one reason for this.  The piano itself was evolving and improving.  If it was tuned in a milder WT or Meantone (MT), he may have found the extra vibrancy in these keys titillating.  It could also be that the tuners of the time were mixing up the rigid rules for WT that Andreas Werkmeister had created.  The keys Chopin liked the best may not have been as strong as a typical WT or MT would have provided.  This would have been so if someone tuned in the seemingly odd, RW style of DeMorgan or a Montal style QET.  If we fast forward to the present, we find a large, concert grand such as the Steinway with a high degree of inharmonicity.  It is well known today that in order to properly effect an ET on a modern piano, the octaves must be stretched (expanded) a little and the temperament be spread equally over that larger territory.  A piano with a high degree of inharmonicity lends itself to a greater amount of this stretch than one with a lower degree. Since the Steinway piano's scale design has not changed during the entire 20th Century and into the 21st, Steinway tuners (to which everyone tips their hat with respect) have traditionally forced the octave wider and wider until the theoretically tempered 5ths have become pure or very nearly so.  About 1985, a technician named Lucas Mason published a book about this called "The New Tuning".  To his dismay, he has not really received the acclaim and credit he seems to think he deserves for it. Tuning an ET with this extra wide octave and purer 5ths will naturally make the 3rds, 10ths and 17ths beat faster.  A theoretically 14 cent wide 3rd may be augmented to 16 cents, into the area created by some of the very mild Victorian style WT's such as the Moore.  If only Chopin and other Romantic era music is to be played on this large, high inharmonicity concert grand, the ETP5 can work quite well. The sound can be so clean and exciting that people will immediately believe that this is now the best solution for all pianos and all music.  That is where I disagree strongly.  Many technicians have tried this under other circumstances and failed miserably.  Particularly on a low inharmonicity piano which resists it, the failed result is most often a RW.  If so, the instrument's owner may react quite negatively. In my opinion, there is a much better alternative in most instances to the ETP5.  It is a QET usually called "Marpurg" although I am quite sure that Marpurg himself never tuned it.  In Owen Jorgensen's handbook of the Equal Beating Temperaments, he provides what he titles the "Marpurg-Neidhardt Composite Quasi Equal Temperament".  Most people today who know this temperament do a slightly different version that I would label the "Marpurg-Neidhardt-PTG Composite Quasi Equal Temperament". I add the "PTG" because the 3 contiguous 3rds, F3-A3,  A3-C#4 and Db4-F4, rather than being tuned Equal Beating are tuned with the 4:5 ratio which true ET has.  It is a very easy temperament for a modern ET tuner to learn to tune by ear or to adapt from an ETD programmed ET. Tune the initial F3-A3-C#4-F4 exactly the same as would be for regular ET (including the appropriate amount of stretch). Then, from each of these notes tuned, tune the available 4ths & 5ths which lie within the F3-F4 octaves perfectly pure.  From F3, tune A#3(Bb3) and C4 as pure intervals.  From A3, tune D4 and E4 as pure intervals.  From C#4, tune F#3 and G#3 as pure intervals.  As easy and simple as that. There will now only be 3 notes left to reconcile:  G3, B3 and D#4(Eb4).  Simply find the point where G3 beats exactly the same from both C4 and D4.  Similarly, find the Equal Beating compromise for B3 from F#3 and E4.  Lastly, find the Equal Beating compromise for D#4(Eb4) from G#3(Ab3) and A#3(Bb3). This will leave you with a temperament in which all 3rds and 6ths will beat, ascend and descend exactly the same as regular ET.  The bonus will be that there will be 9 pure 4ths & 5ths and only 3 tempered ones.  It will give any piano and extra "clean" sound that regular ET does not have.  While the 3 tempered 5ths will stand out noticeably when testing the way a technician does, they virtually go unrecognized when actual music is played. The Marpurg-Neidhardt-PTG Quasi Equal Temperament can be substituted for regular ET to play any and all kinds of music, including but certainly not limited to Chopin on any modern piano. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin <A HREF="http://www.billbremmer.com/">Click here: -=w w w . b i l l b r e m m e r . c o m =-</A></HTML>