Chestnut help......

Greetings all, =0A Earlier posted was a question if Bach may have=
tuned his instrument=0Ain ET when playing with Lutes. I have taken the =
position that ET wasn't=0Apossible, even with the ear of the genius appli=
ed, because of the difficulty=0Ain getting it even near right without lat=
ter-day techniques. =0A I think that Jorgensen's writings support =
this, and will quote him=0Ahere, for the consideration of those that (ri=
ghtfully), don't go along with=0Athis "jes' cause ol' Foote said so....."=
=0AFrom "Tuning", Jorgensen writes;=0A=0A"=85=85 we must conclude that=
equal temperament as we know it was not tuned=0A=0Aon pianos during the =
19th century. A study of the instructions for=0A=0Atuning given in the p=
resent book (by A. J. Ellis who invented the cent=0A=0Ameasurement) for =
the years through 1885 verifies that essential=0A=0Aacoustical informatio=
n for tuning equal temperament was lacking. This=0A=0Awas one reason for=
the 19th century tuners=92 inability to tune equal=0A=0Atemperament by e=
ar. Other deviation was due to the basic concepts of=0A=0Atuning then in=
vogue. 19th century tuning by ear was a highly developed=0A=0Aart based=
on aesthetic judgments for every tone, and test chords were=0A=0Aused mo=
re than test intervals. By contrast, 20th century tuning is a=0A=0Amathe=
matical skill."=0A My own experience bears this well. I can't tune m=
y old familiar ET=0Awithout the use of test intervals that were developed=
long after Bach. =0A(Now, I am really thinking of cracked chestnuts....=
.................)=0ARegards, =0AEd Foote =0APrecision Piano Works=0ANas=
hville, Tn. =0AP.s. We are beginning to consider music for a second "In=
The Temperaments"=0ACD, and are finding that composers later than Beeth=
oven wrote music that is=0Aimproved in Well Temperament. Not Rachmaninof=
f, or Debussy, but a lot of=0ABrahms, Schubert, and Haydn seem to be usin=
g the tonal palette that preceded=0Atheir era's developements toward ET. =
=0A This is reinforcing my belief that strict ET was just not the wa=
y the=0Amajority of pianos were tuned in the mid to late 1800's, but I am=
always=0Alooking for more information. =0A=0A=0A=0A


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From: Gregg Gibson
Subject: Discrimination of Intervals in Melody
PostedDate: 08-12-97 05:34:51
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>In melody however, which is the primary
>means by which harmony is produced (at least ideally) the critical limen
>of intervallic perception is on the order of 55-60 cents. If a given
>melody has one of its members altered by less than this limen, the
>melody may well be heard as vaguely different, but there will be _no_
>fundamental change in melody.

I agree about half-way with Gregg here. I agree in that I have found
that melody maintains its recognizability through what might seem on the
surface to be extreme manipulation. That fact is also born out by melodic
variation and inversion. To that end I have found that differences in
12-toned temperaments, or even 5-limit diatonic JI, produce effects that
are subtle in comparison to the full gamut of new-tuning possibilities.

So, speaking for my own personal new-tuning interests, I find the more
radically nontraditional tunings to be much more interesting. Tunings that
have no recognizable representation of a major scale, for example, seem to
me to provide vastly more exciting possibilities. Of course that's a
matter of personal opinion and interpretation.

Now, speaking of interpretations, I interpret Gregg to say that
differences in 12-toned diatonic tunings, such as would occur between
12TET, a Werckmeister well temperament, QC meantone, and Ptolemaic JI to be
(realistically speaking) so subtle as to be musically insignificant. I
definitely can't agree with that. They are more subtle than, oh ...
quartertones for example, but I have performed or participated in many
studies of one sort or another to show that those subtle differences are
indeed musically interesting. One example is the comparison of JI and
LucyTuning I described to you tuning listers something like a couple years
ago.

There is also another very important counterexample to Gregg's belief
here, again assuming that I understood it correctly. That counterexample
is microtonal steps - e.g., 41sts of an octave, in a melody. Clearly a
melody that uses melodic steps smaller than Gregg's 60-cent limen can't
possibly be rendered faithfully in a tuning with 12 tones per octave. If
anybody doesn't buy that, I recommend picking up a copy of Neil
Haverstick's new CD. It has plenty of examples of great melodies whose
meaning and even recognizability would be significantly impaired by
attempting them in 12's comparatively crude tuning resolution.


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From: mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison)
Subject: Re: Harvard's Just
PostedDate: 15-12-97 03:08:53
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