Re: FAQ -- adaptive JI -- Vicentino addendum

Hello, there.

On the "What is adaptive JI?" thread, I do have this comment on
Vicentino:

In principle, Vicentino's _archicembalo_ would ideally
consist of two compete 19-note manuals, with his second
or "perfect fifth" tuning placing each manual in versions
of the same meantone tuning, evidently 1/4-comma meantone
with pure major thirds (Gb-B#), but with a distance of
1/4-comma (~5.38 cents) between the manuals. This would
make pure Renaissance concords available on all 19 steps.

In practice, Vicentino could only fit 17 notes on the
upper manual, omitting the E# and B# keys from this
manual but otherwise realizing the scheme on his 36-note
archicembalo and arciorgano.

While even the highly skilled player of Vicentino's
instrument would be unlikely to maintain just sonorities
at all points, his scheme indeed makes it possible to
sound such sonorities combining "perfect fifths and
perfect thirds" _frequently_ in the course of a piece.
Slow note-against-note textures where one has time to
choreograph complex hand and finger motions, and
sustained cadential sonorities, might especially
invite the extraordinary effects he reports in his
description of the _arciorgano_ in 1561.

One feature very convenient to the practical player
is the possibility of reverting to regular meantone
for progressions or passages which would pose problems
in maintaining just intonation. Such a solution would
accommodate rapid melodic passages, or places where a
sustained note awkward to break into two parts might
call for a change of keyboard at a point where the
other voices shift from one just sonority to another.

Such an eminently practical approach to this
remarkable instrument and adaptive tuning system might
be nicely in keeping with the views of Vicentino
himself, who defines the music of his time as "tempered
and mixed" even while ingeniously facilitating a union
between the melodic regularity of meantone and the
pure concords of Renaissance just intonation.

Even with this accommodation, mastering such an
adaptive system and its fingering techniques
seems now as then a daunting feat; but Vicentino's
solution may be of interest both as a basis for
automated performances (e.g. MIDI-based) of
16th-century music, and as a model of what singers
and players of flexible-pitch instruments may
do in live ensemble performances, then and now.

For example, Zarlino (1558) observes that singers
tend toward purely intoned concords, but without
the complication of small intervals (specifically
commas) found on keyboards tuned in the syntonic
diatonic. Vincenzo Galilei (1581) likewise notes
the absence of such obvious commas, and concludes
that singers must follow a regular tuning somewhat
like meantone on keyboards.

The hypothesis of adaptive ensemble tuning might
accommodate both these 16th-century observations
regarding vocal intonation, without necessarily
excluding other approaches now and then such as
an intonation closer to the syntonic diatonic with
unequal major seconds or whole-tones and some
comma shifting or drifting.

Most respectfully,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@value.net