RE: [tuning] RE: recordings in historic tunings

Carl Lumma wrote,

>I'll buy the
>person who can find a solo harpsichord album recorded in the last
>5 years in equal tuning an ice cream cone.

Keith Jarrett WTC 2?

(I like vanilla)

From: Paul H. Erlich <PERLICH@ACADIAN-ASSET.COM>

> Carl Lumma wrote,
>
> >I'll buy the
> >person who can find a solo harpsichord album recorded in the last
> >5 years in equal tuning an ice cream cone.
>
> Keith Jarrett WTC 2?
>
> (I like vanilla)

I don't know the WTC recording, but I do know that Jarrett has kept his own
instruments in one well temperament or another ever since he premiered Lou
Harrison's _Concerto for piano with selected orchestra_.

In a message dated 5/20/00 7:50:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time, djwolf@snafu.de
writes:

> I don't know the WTC recording, but I do know that Jarrett has kept his own
> instruments in one well temperament or another ever since he premiered Lou
> Harrison's _Concerto for piano with selected orchestra_.
>
From an autobiography of Keith Jarrett published only in Japanese and Italian:

(You've used Werckmeister tuning?)

Keith Jarrett: Well, it's very important not to read too seriously into what
I'm using. Werckmeister is one man who decided to try to find a better way
to tune. I think that it gets into, again, we are back to science when we
start to talk about which is the best tuning and what's the difference
between them. For me it's the experience of the sound.
I have a student who is always experimenting with tuning. One day I talked
to him and I told him, "Okay, that's enough games, now someone gives you an
instrument and it's tuned by Sears and you can't tune it again, and you have
to make music on it." So I think I would like to say.....there's even a
club, a society for non-tempered tuning. You can get something in the mail
and it tells you where all the concerts are for things that have non-tempered
tunings. Well, these people are as crazy as the ignorant people who don't
know about different tunings.
So, for me, this is what happens. I'm in the room and there's something that
makes a sound, I will deal with that. I will not say ...unless it's really
out of tune, I won't say "Bad!!" "No, that's not right." I will have to use
it.
The Pygmies don't ask if their drums are tuned in equal-tempered or
Werckmeister.....
I'm very aware of these tunings, I mean I know about them. We could talk
about them but I have nothing really to say about them.
But I can tell you a funny story about Lou Harrison's Piano Concerto. I
played at Carnegie Hall, so Steinway had to give us a piano to use. There
was another piano but since they tune it differently, they had to keep both.
They had one tuned to the piece and one tuned for regular pianists. Steinway
knew about this and when I went to see the piano, they said something about
"We are worried about the bad reviews." And I said, "What? What do you
mean?" They said, "Well, people are gonna say that the piano didn't sound
good. And they will know this is a Steinway.....Because it's tuned
differently it won't sound good."
I said, "That's not your problem, that's the composer's....."(laughs) But
they were worried because of this different tuning, people are gonna say,
"Oh, I don't think that piano is very good." (laughs) I had to keep saying,
"It's okay, it's okay, don't worry." (laughs)
There are only a few men still alive who compose in a way that I feel close
to. Lou is one of them. Alan Hovhaness is another one. And then Samuel
Barber is dead, but, I like some of his things.

Johnny Reinhard
AFMM

>>From an autobiography of Keith Jarrett published only in Japanese and Italian:
>
>(You've used Werckmeister tuning?)
>
>Keith Jarrett: ...So, for me, this is what happens. I'm in the room and
>there's something that
>makes a sound, I will deal with that. I will not say ...unless it's really
>out of tune, I won't say "Bad!!" "No, that's not right." I will have to use
>it.

This appears to me to be the almost unavoidable attitude that a performer
must develop when unable to bring his own instrument to the gig.

John Link

**************************************************************************
To purchase the CD "Live at Saint Peter's" by the JOHN LINK VOCAL QUINTET,
visit WWW.JOHNLINKMUSIC.COM, or write to johnlink@con2.com.
**************************************************************************

Jarrett is a hack when playing classical music. put the Roger Woodard recordings of the
shostakovich Preludes and fugues against his and you realize he is way out of his league. His
talents lie elsewhere. I believe Lou wrote another concerto right after the Jarrett thing for
reasons all his own. That is one of my favorites pieces by the man. Jarretts playing with a
broken key on Live/evil is great to give the man credit for what he can do, especially when
playing in a group!

Afmmjr@aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 5/20/00 7:50:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time, djwolf@snafu.de
> writes:
>
> > I don't know the WTC recording, but I do know that Jarrett has kept his own
> > instruments in one well temperament or another ever since he premiered Lou
> > Harrison's _Concerto for piano with selected orchestra_.
> >
>

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

Afmmjr@aol.com wrote,

> But I can tell you a funny story about Lou Harrison's Piano
Concerto. I played at Carnegie Hall, so Steinway had to give us a
piano to use. There was another piano but since they tune it
differently, they had to keep both. They had one tuned to the piece
and one tuned for regular pianists. Steinway knew about this and when
I went to see the piano, they said something about "We are worried
about the bad reviews." And I said, "What?

Ha, this jogged my memory... I remember reading an AP story in the
local newspaper a few years back now that had an absurd headline
something along the lines of "CARNEGIE HALL BANS TWO-LIDDED PIANO!" It
was a similar story of sweaty, anxiety ridden Steinway and Carnegie
officials pacing and wheezing about some fellas piano that added an
additional bottom lid to help sound projection (etc.)... Anybody
remember reading any of this?

Dan

Keith Jarrett:

"there's even a
club, a society for non-tempered tuning. You can get something in the mail
and it tells you where all the concerts are for things that have
non-tempered
tunings. Well, these people are as crazy as the ignorant people who don't
know about different tunings."

OUCH!!!

----- Original Message -----
From: Paul H. Erlich <PERLICH@ACADIAN-ASSET.COM>

> Keith Jarrett:
>
> "there's even a
> club, a society for non-tempered tuning. You can get something in the
mail
> and it tells you where all the concerts are for things that have
> non-tempered
> tunings. Well, these people are as crazy as the ignorant people who don't
> know about different tunings."
>
> OUCH!!!

Don't worry Paul, theres an even crazier club of people who pay good money
to go and hear a self-indulgent asshole improvise vapidly on the piano for
an hour at a stretch. These people apparently also pay good money to buy CDs
of this same egomaniac pretending to be a classical pianist. Whats the world
comming to?

Dante wrote,

>Don't worry Paul, theres an even crazier club of people who pay good money
>to go and hear a self-indulgent asshole improvise vapidly on the piano for
>an hour at a stretch. These people apparently also pay good money to buy
CDs
>of this same egomaniac pretending to be a classical pianist. Whats the
world
>comming to?

Dante, I belong to that crazy club (lovin' Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne) as
well as to the aforementioned crazy tuning club. My sister's old piano
teacher, a Moscow conservatory grad and Busoni competion winner, lavished
high praise on Jarrett's Bach renditions, praise which he reserved for a
very, very few pianists (including Richter). In any case, I'd feel less than
comfortable simply dismissing these comments by firing a few insults in the
direction from which they came.

----- Original Message -----
From: Paul H. Erlich <PERLICH@ACADIAN-ASSET.COM>
> Dante, I belong to that crazy club (lovin' Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne) as
> well as to the aforementioned crazy tuning club. My sister's old piano
> teacher, a Moscow conservatory grad and Busoni competion winner, lavished
> high praise on Jarrett's Bach renditions, praise which he reserved for a
> very, very few pianists (including Richter). In any case, I'd feel less
than
> comfortable simply dismissing these comments by firing a few insults in
the
> direction from which they came.

In that case, to what would you attribute his willful closed-mindedness and
self-satisfied ignorance concerning a major dimension of music?

>In that case, to what would you attribute his willful closed-mindedness and
>self-satisfied ignorance concerning a major dimension of music?

Though I clearly have a problem with his point and the way he put it, note
that Jarrett calls both those who seek out performances in alternate
tunings, _and_ those who are ignorant of alternate tunings, equally "crazy".

Rosati replied to Ehrich :

>
> In that case, to what would you attribute his willful closed-mindedness
and
> self-satisfied ignorance concerning a major dimension of music?
>

Being a big fan of Jarretts Standards, I wouldn't throw
any insults his way, and whether or not he is an
egotistical asshole is not SO uncommon in the art world.

He is shaking a finger at us as placing lots of importance
on one particular aspect of music, perhaps at the expense
of others. Our interest may be capital-T TUNING, there
is a similar musical ghetto for computer composers who's
interest is in capital-T TIMBRE (with litte rhythm,
melodic, or harmonic accompaniement), and one can find
many musics which concentrate on specific areas of music
at the expense of other areas.

"Major Dimension of Music" is something I question. Certainly
melodic tuning, is not super important. As long as an expected
system is sufficiently approximated, a listener will fill in the gaps.
Harmonic tuning is the more interesting question and a music
which sufficiently distinguishes between 81:80 and 5:4 to be
a meaningful musical event may have to sacrifice other things,
like complex melodies, forms or rhythms, to make that
subtlety stand out.

Believe me, I don't know the answer to this question. All
I know is that my performaing of jazz and blues is invariably
out-of-tune in 12tet yet there can be "really good moments"
and "really bad moments" regardless. [Which makes me
wonder if I'll be able to "get away with" a 31tet guitar on
a normal gig. I think I can if there is no piano...]

Bob Valentine

Why are we talking about Jarretts music when La monte is so much more interesting and in his
own tuning! Jarrett is always getting lost anyway.

Bob Valentine wrote:

>
> >
>
> Being a big fan of Jarretts Standards, I wouldn't throw
> any insults his way, and whether or not he is an
> egotistical asshole is not SO uncommon in the art world.
>
> Bob Valentine
>

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

----- Original Message -----
From: Carl Lumma <CLUMMA@NNI.COM>

>The only truely bad thing I've heard out
> of Jarrett is his clavichord album.

Yikes! Thats the only thing of his I like! Oh well, let's give the devil his
due- if there wasn't anything there, we wouldn't be talking about him.

Dante

> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Carl Lumma <CLUMMA@NNI.COM>
> >
> > The only truely bad thing I've heard out
> > of Jarrett is his clavichord album.

> Yikes! Thats the only thing of his I like!
> Dante

And the moral of this story is. . .

Kraig Grady wrote:
>
> Why are we talking about Jarretts music when La monte is so much more
> interesting and in his own tuning! Jarrett is always getting lost
> anyway.

This reminds me: La Monte has takes the last 6 1/2 hour
performance of the Well Tuned Piano and transfered it to
DVD. Marian Zazeela told me there's going to be a limited edition
of a thousand pressed. When or how much, I don't know.

-
As for Jarrett: I have friends who work at
the Princeton Record Exchange and when Jarrett
is in the neighborhood, he stops in. If you try to
talk to him, he says "I'm on my own time" and ignores you.
Charming.

And there's no doubt here that La Monte's a better improvisor!

--
* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* xouoxno@virtulink.com
*
* 49/32 R a d i o "all microtonal, all the time"
* M E L A v i r t u a l d r e a m house monitor
*
* http://www.virtulink.com/immp/lookhere.htm

David Beardsley wrote:

>
>
> This reminds me: La Monte has takes the last 6 1/2 hour
> performance of the Well Tuned Piano and transfered it to
> DVD. Marian Zazeela told me there's going to be a limited edition
> of a thousand pressed. When or how much, I don't know.

please keep me updated on this one!!!!!!! please!

>
> And there's no doubt here that La Monte's a better improvisor!

I think that Riley also out does jarret. A counterpuntal imagination terry has. Even what
little I heard of Michael Harrison was of more interest.

>
>

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria island
www.anaphoria.com

Kraig Grady wrote:

> > And there's no doubt here that La Monte's a better improvisor!
>
> I think that Riley also out does jarret. A counterpuntal imagination
> terry has. Even what little I heard of Michael Harrison was of more
> interest.

It's all those years of singing raga!

--
* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* xouoxno@virtulink.com
*
* 49/32 R a d i o "all microtonal, all the time"
* M E L A v i r t u a l d r e a m house monitor
*
* http://www.virtulink.com/immp/lookhere.htm