Comments on the importance of tuning in New Scientist.

I found Lucy's quotation from James Iliff in the New Scientist very
interesting.

Some comments:



>An alternative basis for deriving musical intervals may be of great
>acoustical and mathematical interest in itself. But its musical
>significance may be slight.

I'm inclined to expect something more like the reverse. Lucy's belief
that pi has anything to do with tuning, best I can tell, holds marginal
interest at best both scientifically and musically. Still, in my admittely
brief experimentation with LucyTuning, it struck me as an interesting
tuning with definite musical possibilities.

But I should qualify that by saying that it strikes me as one of a long
list of interesting tuning possibilities, and at a quick glance, it seems
to me to be somewhere in the lower middle priority-wise of that list.




>For most of us, the difference between the "cooked" [tempered] and the natural
>[just] version is so slight that it becomes lost in the idiosyncracies of
>performance.

I believe that to be both thoroughly true, and thorougly false in two
different ways. Anybody who has played an indefinite-pitch instrument
(e.g., virtually all orchestral instruments) can easily confirm that the
pitch-biasing imperfections of these instruments, combined with the time
and attention limits of normal-speed music, make it extremely difficult to
precisely perform in, for example, 12TET vs. QC meantone, much less the
subtle variations of different well temperaments. There's not doubt in my
mind that that's true in all but sustained chords, and I think it's
important for mathematical theorists to bear that in mind.

But there are very important limits to that argument. Firstly,
sustained chords certainly do occur occasionally in normal-speed music, and
they probably get the most attention in the audience's mind, at least when
it comes to how the tuning affects them. Second, there certainly are
plenty of definite-pitched, and at least much-more-definite-pitched,
instruments out there. Guitars and pianos are extremely common examples of
these, along with electronic instruments.

But certainly the most important caveat to this argument, is that it
applies only to distinguishing temperaments (or not) of traditional pitch
relationships, and entirely ignores nontraditional pitch relationships.
The difference between, for example, a 9:7-frequency-ratio supramajor third
and a normal major third is very easily audible in normal-speed music.
Also, that large a pitch discrepancy from "normal" tuning (nearly a
quartertone) is well outside the semirandom deviations due to instruments'
pitch indefiniteness.

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Ed Foote wrote:

'' I don't know if I can agree with this. I have never heard a string
quartet play in 12 TET. They often say that is what they are doing, but
they
always fall into a more tonally centered Pythagorean as they play. Who is
going to accept a constant 14 cent wide major3rd everwhere, in all keys, in
a
string quartet? If a quartet played in true equal, I don't think the
audience would be talking about phrasing when the curtain dropped. ''

The closest you can come to 12tet in quartet playing is rumored to have
been the Kolisch quartet, whose recordings of the Schoenberg quartets have
been recently rereleased. I haven't listened closely enough to make any
definitive comments, but the Major thirds are certainly sharp, and although
the general tone quality is not my favorite, the appropriateness for the
more expressionist material of both intonation and tone color is absolutely
clear.

Anyone interested in Schoenberg's ideas about intonation (in favor of
temperament, with an interesting turn on ''natural'' tuning) should look at
his letter to Joseph Yasser, published in the Musical Quarterly in 1945(?).

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Thank you, Ed Foote, for your description of your tuning class. It
expands on my point that Western classical music is not based on 12TET.
So many posts on the list assume that getting away from 12TET requires
getting away from that music.

When are you releasing your Beethoven in the Temperaments CD?

In early-music concerts, it is customary to identify in the program notes
the keyboard instruments that are used (who built them, where, and when).
Perhaps it would help the "temperament crusade" to identify the
temperaments as well (and not just for the keyboards, come to think of
it). It would encourage the audience to think about them and listen for
the differences.

I certainly agree that the thing to do is to take music that people
already know and enjoy and present it in other tunings - especially when
the pieces sound so much better that way!


A couple of specific comments:

You wrote:
>I have never heard a string
>quartet play in 12 TET. They often say that is what they are doing, but
they
>always fall into a more tonally centered Pythagorean as they play. Who
is
>going to accept a constant 14 cent wide major3rd everwhere, in all keys,
in a
>string quartet?

Anyone who hears it played with such wide vibrato that they can't tell
how wide the 3rds are. Is it just coincidence that the more prevalent
12TET has become the more string players and singers have used vibrato?

Also, the same people will accept such thirds as will accept chamber
music with piano and strings, using an equally-tempered piano. In this
case, either 1) the strings match the piano and the audience finds those
14 cent wide 3rds just fine, or 2) the strings continue to play with more
pure intervals (compared to each other) and the audience doesn't notice
that they're not in tune with the piano.

In concerts that have pieces both for strings alone and for strings with
piano, I have never heard the audience talking about the temperament(s)
used. I don't think most of them listen closely enough (or know what to
listen for) to tell the difference. Change the phrasing, though, and the
audience will notice.

But you do seem to agree that even the performers don't realize they're
not playing in 12TET.


>I think it is easier to decide on a musically proper temperament for
>Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, etal. than it is to find agreement on
phrasing.
> There are a limited number of temperaments that would have had been
>available. Most of them have been written down, debated, buttressed and
>supported,etc, and since the common forms were near universally shared,
with
>listening, one can usually find the temperament [...] that works
best....

I agree that it is not difficult to determine a musically appropriate
temperament, but "works best" and "intended" are quite different things.
Just to mention a couple examples, what temperament did Bach intend for
the WTC, and what did John Bull intend for his Hexachord Fantasia?

Gordon Collins

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I have noticed people talking about which temperaments are used by
singers and instrumentalists. I think that there is a misconception.

Temperaments are only necessary on those instruments which are tuned prior
to playing. Those instruments which are tuned AS they are played will
always search for beatless intervals (or as close as time and skill
allow.)

The brass sections in any major orchestra are very good at finding just
major thirds, for instance. You'll find that the gorgeous full sound of a
low brass section usually occurs when the tuning is as close to just as
the skill of the performers allows.

Likewise, I don't know of any choir that could conscientiously sing in
'werckmeister III' or 'Vallotti.' They simply listen to each other, and
find as beatless a sound as they can get.

String players tune to PERFECT fifths, rather than tempered fifths, with
one exception: some cellists (and fewer violists) will tune to tempered
fifths in chamber music featuring a piano. This is because their low C
string is three fifths away from their tuning note of A, and the
difference between the C which is three fifths lower than A, and the
tempered C is quite noticeable. (Schoenberg did ask that his string
players tune to tempered fifths, but I don't know anyone who does this
now.)

I reiterate: Tempering is only necessary for those instruments which are
tuned prior to playing (keyboards,fretted instruments.)

Joe Downing,
Chair, Composition/Theory
Syracuse University School of Music

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Joe Downing wrote:
>I reiterate: Tempering is only necessary for those instruments which are
>tuned prior to playing (keyboards,fretted instruments.)
>
Thank you for stating this so eloquently. It has been long overdue.

Ronald Bruce Smith
CNMAT
1750 Arch Street
Berkeley, CA 94709
smith@cnmat.berkeley.edu
tel: (510)-643-9990 ext. 310
fax: (510) 642-7918

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Rudolf Kolisch always made a point of tuning all four violin strings to the
piano when playing accompanied. His recording of the Schumann _Phantasie_is probably as close as one can come to 12tet violin playing. His influence
through his teaching in America and in Europe - especiallly at the
Darmst�dter Ferienkursen - is not to be underestimated; his writings onperformance practice, particular tempi of works in the Viennese traditioncontinue to be influential.

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On 6/21/97 Gary Morrison said:
> The conventional string-player's wisdom - whether true or not - is that
>people's ears home in on the highest pitch in a vibrato pattern.

For the violin family this is true as the vibrato is a frequency deviation
down from the principle frequency (i.e., a backwards rocking of the wrist
and finger). However, vibrato is an upwards freq. shift on rock&roll
fretted guitar technique (string bend up) (BTW: also on fretted sitar),
so the low freq. boundary is the aural reference as principle.

Like many aspects of theoretical consideration, the physical performance
practice determines much of the 'reality' by default.
-- Brian Belet

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>Temperaments are only necessary on those instruments which are tuned prior
>to playing.
>The brass sections in any major orchestra are very good at finding just
>major thirds, for instance.

I believe you'll find that, even within the realm of a single
instrument, that depends upon the musical context. For example, you'll
find that long sustained chords often tend toward JI, but unaccompanied
scalar melodic passages tend closer to equal-temperament.

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>>I have never heard a string
>>quartet play in 12 TET. They often say that is what they are doing, but they
>>always fall into a more tonally centered Pythagorean as they play. Who is
>>going to accept a constant 14 cent wide major3rd everwhere, in all keys, in a
>>string quartet?

Well.... Every careful study I've heard of tuning in real musical
practice on indefinite-pitched instruments, concludes that performers
rarely follow any one single tuning formula accurately and consistently.
Well-known formulas, like 5:4 major thirds for example, certainly do get
used in spots though.



>Anyone who hears it played with such wide vibrato that they can't tell
>how wide the 3rds are. Is it just coincidence that the more prevalent
>12TET has become the more string players and singers have used vibrato?

The conventional string-player's wisdom - whether true or not - is that
people's ears home in on the highest pitch in a vibrato pattern.

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Daniel Wolf wrote:
>Rudolf Kolisch always made a point of tuning all four violin strings to t>he
>piano when playing accompanied. His recording of the Schumann _Phantasie_>
>is probably as close as one can come to 12tet violin playing.


I am very curious as to whether Kolisch's fingerings employed many open
strings.

Ronald Bruce Smith
CNMAT
1750 Arch Street
Berkeley, CA 94709
smith@cnmat.berkeley.edu
tel: (510)-643-9990 ext. 310
fax: (510) 642-7918

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