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Mozart's tuning

🔗A440A@aol.com

11/14/1998 10:29:59 AM
Greetings,
Historically, Mozart may have been surrounded by the latter days of
meantone, or the earlier days of Well Temperament. I have had it pointed out
to me that everything he composed for the keyboard stays in the six or seven
of the simplest keys, thus, a 1/6 comma meantone would provide the maximum
amount of consonance.
However, during the Beethoven temperament project, I got a chance to
listen to a variety of temperaments used for a variety of music, and it seems
that on Mozart sounded better on a tuning such as the Kirnberger III than on
the modified meantone. The meantone just was too plain lifeless.
Maybe it would be better to approach it from the standpoint of "Anything
but ET!"
Regards,
Ed Foote
Precision Piano Works
Nashville, Tn.