Brian's psychoacoustics

My goodness, judging from Brian's post, I'm ignorant and yet know enough to
have a nefarious "hidden agenda" to twist the facts to serve my own
proselytization for just intonation. Among the things I am supposed to have
claimed or implied are: that the ear is a machine that performs fourier
analysis (that different parts of the basilar membrane are responsive to
different frequencies in no way implies that it performs a fourier
transform), and that "higher brain regions" are involved in pitch
determination (though the neural pathways and brain are no doubt involved, I
cannot say how "high").

When I decide to compose with just intonation, I do so only because that is
what I like to hear, not because of any current research or intellectual
number-crunching (though I do not dispute the importance of the
research). Now, maybe my ears are fooling me, as Brian seems to suggest, but
I prefer to trust my ears rather than abstract reasoning when composing, if
it comes down to that. At any rate, I have grown to have a healthy
skepticism about acoustics research that purports to show that something
cannot be heard or is not musically significant based on contrived A/B blind
tests. Among the other things that have been "proven" this way is that
difference tones have no musical significance.

Oh, and Brian, I'm happy to see that you have come out against unproductive
flames. Does that include bigoted remarks about musicians in academia?

Bill Alves

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My personal opinion - and I know that many will disagree - is that deciding
between equal-temperaments and most well-temperaments is a comparative small
concern. The differences between these temperaments, although certainly
historically significant and worth discussing, are fairly small in total overall
sound, compared to quarter-comma meantone for example.

Everything I've read and heard suggests that well-temperaments were fairly
fluid at the time. Everybody had his or her own favorite, often based on how
the organ in that particular town's church was tuned. Harpsichords and
clavichords had to be retuned virtually every time you sit down to play them, so
they weren't much of an absolute reference like pianos are nowadays.

Regarding Bach's Lute works, I suppose it's worth pointing out that while he
composed them with the lute in mind, he himself never had time to master the
lute as a performer. He therefore wrote them on what computer nerds like me
might jokingly call a "lute emulator" - a specialized harpsichord called a
Lautenwerk. So those works were probably written with equal-temperament in
mind, but when he himself played them, they were probably were in whatever
well-temperament caught his fancy at the time.


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On Wed, 27 Sep 1995, Neil Haverstick wrote:

> Haverstick here...I must confess that I am greatly enjoying the
> ongoing Bach debate...Bach is a personal favorite of mine, and I feel
> that he is the greatest "western" composer to date. While I do not have
> the scholarly background of a lot of the folks on the forum, I
> nonetheless have a great curiosity to learn as much as possible about
> subjects that interest me. Thus, I want to pose a few questions
> regarding the great German, and hopefully some of you real smart types
> out there will further my education by your answers. Here goes...
> 1. Since Bach called his great keyboard work "The Well Tempered
> Clavichord" (or was it Clavier?), wouldn't that imply that it was
> composed in well, not equal, temperament? Am I overlooking something
> here?

The term "Gleichschwebenden Temperatur" for equal temperament was
certainly in use in Bach's time, and I think you are right...Bach would
have had *The Equal Tempered Clavier* if that was his explicit aim.


2. Bach composed a number of works for lute, and was, I have read,
> friends with the great lutenist Sylvius Leopold Weiss ( they supposedly
> jammed together on one occasion)...I am supposing lutes were tuned in
> equal temperament, since they had straight, not staggered, frets, and
> I am thus assuming that Bach composed these works in equal
> temperament...am I in the ballpark?

There was no absolute pitch concept in the Baroque period so an A could
be almost anywhere in the range of an octave, usually dependent on the
church organ nearby. Since some of the keys in well temperaments mirror
equal temperament, of course writing for lute in this fashion would be no
problem. Keep in mind that Bach favored the freless cello for continuo
over the freted gamba, implying that it was need for its pitch
flexibility.

3. Bach composed a number of solo
> violin and cello suites...since these were for unaccompanied
> instruments, could the performers have used pure intervals when they
> played them? Or, since some of the pieces had chords in them, which must
> be next to impossible to finger on these instruments, were they meant to
> be equal tempered as well? Would a performer back then ever mix
> temperaments in a performance (of course, I mean in a solo work)?

It would have been easier to reach for a perfectly just chord on a
fretless instrument than to to try reaching for an equally-tempered
chord. If not for serious ear-training in equal temperament, one could
never navigate logarithmic equal distances of _any_ interval. At least
the just harmonies are contained inherently in the harmonics of the
strings themselves.


> I get a feeling from Bach that he was a practical man, and that the
> ideas he presented in his works were the most important issue, not the
> execution, per se. In other words, the aforementioned solo violin pieces
> are so difficult on violin (and so much more playable on guitar, for
> example) that one wonders why he wrote them for this instrument in the
> first place. Perhaps his inner world was so rich in musical voices that
> he didn't really care about the medium on which these ideas were
> expressed.

Remember that that Baroque violin had a bow that could easily play 4-note
chords, forcing modern violinists to arpeggiate and increasing the
difficulty of getting the piece across. He was certainly practical
enough not to trust any great writing to the bassoons, which during his
time and vicinity, were poorly played and unreliable instruments. It was
indeed a practical concern that one wrote music that could be played in
different places by different performers...and possibly in slightly
different tunings.

> Of course, we're all supposing, to one degree or another, just what
> happened back then, but it is fun to speculate. I am looking forward to
> some responses to my questions, so have at it...and don't forget to come
> to Denver for the MICROSTOCK festival on October 21st...see you, Hstick

Neil, I haven't seen anything on the list about MICROSTOCK. Care to
elaborate? (smile)


Johnny Reinhard
Director
American Festival of Microtonal Music, Inc.
reinhard@styx.ios.com

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> Keep in mind that Bach favored the freless cello for continuo
> over the freted gamba, implying that it was need for its pitch
> flexibility.

There are of course other possible reasons why somebody would prefer a 'cello
over a gamba. Fretted instruments - even with all other aspects kept identical
- have a brighter tone, and fretless instruments also have greater pitch
fluctuations in vibrato.


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Johnny Reinhard wrote:

> The term "Gleichschwebenden Temperatur" for equal temperament was
> certainly in use in Bach's time, and I think you are right...Bach would
> have had *The Equal Tempered Clavier* if that was his explicit aim.

Das Gleichschwebend Temperierte Klavier? Hmm, somehow I doubt that.
And if equal temperament was his aim this title suggests that he would
be opposed to D.W.K. being played in an unequal temperament, which is
hard to believe.

Manuel Op de Coul coul@ezh.nl

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