Mozart and ET??

Greetings Jonathan;

Inre the use of ET in Mozart's lifetime.

Interesting viewpoint concerning the evolution of ET, however, after
reading the McGeary article, I remain unconvinced of your main points and
dates. This follows from several reasonings.

1)
> A substantial and important part of
>McGeary's argument is devoted to establishing that Kirnberger II never
>had the prominence in practice that a few later treatises might
>suggest

I would agree that the Kirnberger II was not so popular. It would seem
that Kirnberger's temperament was touted mainly by his personal supporters,
and their agenda is suspect, ( it was not that smooth of a temperament). To
some extent, I believe McGeary has drawn his sights on a "straw man".

>"equal temperament was in the process of supplanting well-tempered
>systems for keyboards in the German-speaking lands during Mozart's
>lifetime".

It is possible that there were theorists pointing to ET as a superior
method of tuning,however,theory and practise are two different things.

>From Jorgenson's research, I offer the following quotes from Johann Joseph
Loehr's book,> Uber die Scheibler'sche Erfindung uberhaupt und dessen
Pianoforte-und Orgel-Stimmung insbesondere<

"There never was a man capable of tuning by a ear a pianoforte or an organ
so as not to leave some inequality of temperament, and there never will be"
and
" {Equal Temperament} hitherto has not been possible....Before Mr.
Scheibler's invention no such means existed by which even a tolerable
equality of temperament could be obtained"

This was published in Krefeld in 1836.


>you already know the time when Broadwood made the
>change).

Again, according to Jorgenson, in 1850, ( I think), A.J. Hipkins stated that
the best tuners at the Broadwood factory "didn't tune anything like equal
temperament"



in Germany during the second half of the 18th is because piano >tuning
had largely become a task of professionals by the time of the
>French/English changes, whereas many or most players were capable of
>tuning their own pianos at the time the changes occured in Germany. Am
>I right?

Yes, but that doesn't mean that they were using ET, which is about the
most difficult temperament to tune. There were much easier ways to tune a
non-restrictive temperament.
There is no evidence that there was knowledge of testintervals in the
1700's. Without the normal tests for interval width, I would not be able to
tune an acceptable ET today, and I have been tuning ET for the last 20 years
at recording and broadcast standards. I don't think ET was possible, given
the state of science in the 1700's. ( Mersenne ratios didn't give much
information that was of any use to piano tuning, did he?)

> Beethoven's well-known pronouncements on key
> characteristics should not be taken to imply that he preferred some
>variety of well-temperament, because he is also on record as claiming
>that he could distinguish between C# major and Db major (!), which, I
>need hardly say, is not a distinction that can be made in any
>well-temperament.

Hmmmm. Is this a distinction that can be made in ET? I am not sure by what
mechanism this last statement is supposed to support either direction.

>I would accept that Beethoven's notions concerning
>key characteristics originated in part from the well-temperament that
>he must have been familiar with in his youth, but if the connection
>between the two had been of great importance to him, we should expect
>him to have made statements on the lamentable erosion of key
>characteristics through the adoption of equal temperament

This seems to beg the question. If, in fact, there was no ET actually
being tuned, he would have made no statements about the erosion.

These are all academic points, There is very little hope of arriving at a
definitive answer, However, There is another compelling reason to doubt
that Mozart and Beethoven composed their keyboard work on equally tempered
pianos.
To investigate their music, one should play it in ET and well
temperament, side by side, and compare. I am presently working with several
artists that are intimately familiar with this music. When I introduced them
to Well temperament, the one common response I got from them is that the
music of the classical Germans makes a lot more sense when played in well
temperament.
I prefer the Young or Prinz temperaments for the modern pianos, as the
greatly increased overtones renders many of the other well temps to be harsh
when more than three accidentals are involved.

Given the ineffable quality of dissonance forming musical contrasts, talk
will only go so far, it is the ear that must decide. To that end, I can
only say that presently in the works is a CD of historical tunings on the
modern concert grand. The record company has requested that I not divulge
exactly what, yet, but this list will be the first place I will notify when
given the go-ahead.

Regards,
Ed Foote
Precision Piano Works
Nashville, Tn.

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On Sat, 1 Mar 1997, PAULE wrote:
> In order to prove this experimentally, you could use
> magnetic pickups rather than acoustical resonators to determine the
> amplitude of the vibrations on the string . . .

Below is a message which I sent some days ago, but which apparently
never made it off my node:

*** BEGIN QUOTED-MESSAGE ***
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 09:43:37 -0600 (CST)
To: tuning@ella.mills.edu
Subject: Re: Sympathetic Vibrations

On Wed, 26 Feb 1997, Lydia Ayers wrote:
> >Yes, but tubes present orders of magnitude more surface area to be acted
> >upon by sound pressure than strings do.
>
> Yes, they do have more surface area, and they could even be said to
> contain their own resonators, since they are hollow. But, even so,
> it is the air that carries the vibrations which stimulate the
> sympathetic vibrations, not a sounding board connected to the
> original stimulus and not cables or anything else.

Nobody was questioning that air could transmit vibrations--that's what
sound is, after all. The original question was _can a string be set
into significant vibrating motion by air vibrations alone?_ Examples
involving tubes, or strings mechanically coupled to soundboards or
other strings, do not help resolve this question.

A simple experiment that _would_ resolve the question is this: sing at
an electric guitar at a pitch matching one of the strings. Note the
level of the output and compare vs. a gentle pluck. I'll bet it's
several orders of magnitude (bels) lower. Surely someone out there has
an electric guitar handy?

--pH (manynote@library.wustl.edu or http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote)
O
/\ "Do you like to gamble, Eddie?
-\-\-- o Gamble money on pool games?"
*** END QUOTED-MESSAGE ***

--pH (manynote@library.wustl.edu or http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote)
O
/\ "Do you like to gamble, Eddie?
-\-\-- o Gamble money on pool games?"

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