Temperaments/tyros/neophytes and pros

Joe Downing wrote:

>Those instruments which are tuned AS they are played will
>always search for beatless intervals (or as close as time and skill
>allow.)
..
>I don't know of any choir that could conscientiously sing in
>'werckmeister III' or 'Vallotti.'

One thing you don't hear in performance (good ones, at least!) is
musicians wandering around frequency space searching for the right
intervals. That's because a significant fraction of practice and
rehearsal time is spent on intonation. Musicians learn what it *feels*
like to produce a certain note so they can do so in performance, coming
in on the right pitch. In the practice room, the pitch standard is an
electronic tuner or a piano. In rehearsal, the standard is each other.
A choir that rehearses with, say, an organ will adjust its intonation to
whatever is the temperament of the organ. You may not want to say that
the choir members are deliberately choosing a temperament, but they
definitely are adjusting the set of pitches they produce to match a
predefined set.


>They simply listen to each other, and
>find as beatless a sound as they can get.

I don't see how choir members can listen for beats at all, unless they
are all singing long notes with absolutely no vibrato. Whether or not
the ear hears the top or bottom or something else as "the" pitch, vibrato
prevents beats from forming by continuously varying the pitch and/or
amplitude. If any could form, the vibrato would drown them out with its
own beats. Most of the time, the notes go by too fast to listen for
beats anyway. The only way to judge intervals under those conditions is
by the absolute pitch difference, which is, I believe, how singers really
sing.


>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.

.. which doesn't seem to make all that much difference, as they then
proceed to avoid open strings because a) the tone quality is considered
to be less desirable and b) they can't use vibrato on them. The actual
intonation is determined by finger placement. Changing the pitch of a
whole string reduces the amount of adjustment a cellist must make in hand
and finger position, but the end result for all the strings players in
the ensemble is the same: adjusting the set of pitches they produce to
match a predefined set.

Singers and instrumentalists adjust their intonation in rehearsal, and
(attempt to!) reproduce it in performance. For those performing with a
tempered keyboard instrument, the result will be a performance in that
temperament.

Gordon Collins

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