Ed Foote's ET remarks

Back in the 70's the elder Mr. Sabathil and Robert Buecker
both lent me harpsichords for a while, and naturally I had
to tune them every couple of days.

For me, at least, well temperaments are what comes naturally in
this situation. Each time I tuned, I tried to find appropriate
little personalities for each key. E and A were usually brilliant,
and G and E-flat were usually sweet; but it was a game pursued
for fun, and it was different every time.

I think it is simply true that the well temperaments are
attractive variations on ET, and they are indeed improvements
upon ET.

The French, of course, are bureaucrats by nature; but in practice
a well temperament is better even for serialism than a blank
ET. It is true that one might want to retune keyboards in serial
pieces from section to section, or even phrase to phrase, but
that is no insurmountable problem with electronic instruments.

Best,

Will





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Will Grant wrote:
>
> I don't know the reference here, but I know from personal
> experience that C# and Db can be quite different.

WHAT!

> It would
> be, of course, impossible to tune them both on the same piano
> at the same time, but that doesn't make them equivalent,
> except within the artificialities of ET.

HUH?

Either:

1. C# and Db are distinct pitches, as on a split-keyed instrument
intended for meantone tunings, or else

2. the distinction is purely notational, as on any 12-per octave
keyboard, whether tuned to 12TET or to a well-tempered scheme. In this
case, the distinction can either be

2a. functional (e.g. a C#, and not a Db, as the leading note to D
major or minor)

2b. or arbitrary (e.g. Bach's choice of Eb minor for the eighth
Prelude and Fugue of Book I, but D# minor for the eighth Prelude and
Fugue of Book II). Such arbitrary choices can be made on the basis of
various equally arbitrary associations, such as sharps brilliance
and flats mellowness etc., but they have no physical basis
whatsoever (do I really need to say this?) and such associations will
in any case vary from listener to listener.

> ergo, the distinction between C# and Db makes sense
> _only_ in well temperament. But of course, you can't
> set two different temperaments at once, at least not
> on a piano.

No! As I said above, the distinction only makes sense on instruments
which allow for more than 12 pitch-classes per octave.

Well-temperaments were given their name to distinguish them from other
temperaments -- namely the meantone family -- which did not allow the
playing of all keys, or limitless modulation on a 12-per-octave
keyboard. On a well-tempered instrument, there is no acoustical
difference between the keys of Db and C# (whatever different
associations the different notation might evoke for Will Grant); on a
meantone instrument, the issue is more complicated: taking the lower
rank of keys to be C, D, E, F, G, A, B, then if there is only one
upper rank key between C and D, it is of course not arbitrary whether
that key is C# or Db, but a matter of intervallic relations between
this key and those of the lower rank (it was always in practice C#,
simply because this was needed much more often, as a ficta
leading-note). However, to have two acoustically distinct scales of C#
and Db on a meantone keyboard would require no less than 19 keys per
octave (and still more if you wanted to play any pieces in these
keys).

Anyone who holds that C# major and Db major can be distinguished, on
grounds that are neither acoustic, nor associational has fallen prey
to terminal mystificatory impulses. If Will Grant is happy to accept
the associational explanation, I have no argument. Otherwise ...
(there's no arguing over mystical beliefs.)

--
Jonathan Walker
Queen's University Belfast
mailto:kollos@cavehill.dnet.co.uk
http://www.music.qub.ac.uk/~walker/



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On Mon, 3 Mar 1997, Will Grant wrote:
> I don't know the reference here, but I know from personal
> experience that C# and Db can be quite different.

>From discussing the matter with people who could apparently hear the
difference, my guess is that they infer the key in the nebulous region
of C#/Db, G#/Ab, D#/Eb from the harmonic context: if you modulate into
it from the flat direction, it's a sharp key, and vice versa.

--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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