historical question

I wanted to finish my trombone piece in MIRACLE, but I got SUDDENLY
drafted into doing the music for a production of THE TEMPEST on
Theatre Row... RUSH RUSH, of course...

Naturally, I want to include "alternate tunings" in it...

I'm thinking of using some Dowland, since he composed right around
the time of Shakespeare, and Wim Hoogewerf was kind enough to give me
a wonderful volume of Dowland.

I set my synths at the moment to MEANTONE tuning....

Is that about right for Shakespeare's time???

I'm going to use other pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book as
well as the Dowland...

I know that Dowland has his *own* very ideosyncratic tuning... but
I'm just looking for something *general* that could apply to the
period, not trying to get *too* specific on this.

1/4 comma meantone sounds pretty good with this...

Should I go with that??

Of course I am subjecting this all to my own
transposition/distortion/manipulation... so it isn't just going to be
the historical pieces.... more on the order of what Lucas Foss does
with his _Baroque Variations_ if I can get away with it...

Meantone so far sounds *much* more interesting than 12-tET for this
era...

Is that historically accurate??

Thanks!

________ _______ ______ _____
Joseph Pehrson

--- In tuning@y..., jpehrson@r... wrote:

> I set my synths at the moment to MEANTONE tuning....
>
> Is that about right for Shakespeare's time???

You bet -- 1564-1616 is about as deep into the meantone era as you
can get . . . 1/4-comma meantone was "typical", though 2/7-comma and
even 1/3-comma were discussed as viable alternatives around this
time . . . the "optimal" 7/26-comma meantone calculated by Woolhouse
and myself falls well within this range . . . later on, in the 18th
century, 1/5-comma and 1/6-comma meantone (which sound closer to 12-
tET) were in vogue . . .

--- In tuning@y..., "Paul Erlich" <paul@s...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_26699.html#26724

> --- In tuning@y..., jpehrson@r... wrote:
>
> > I set my synths at the moment to MEANTONE tuning....
> >
> > Is that about right for Shakespeare's time???
>
> You bet -- 1564-1616 is about as deep into the meantone era as you
> can get . . . 1/4-comma meantone was "typical", though 2/7-comma
and even 1/3-comma were discussed as viable alternatives around this
> time . . . the "optimal" 7/26-comma meantone calculated by
Woolhouse and myself falls well within this range . . . later on, in
the 18th century, 1/5-comma and 1/6-comma meantone (which sound
closer to 12-tET) were in vogue . . .

Hi Paul!

Thanks so much for your specific answer to this! Well, I will try to
convince the director to go with this... hopefully she won't even
hear the difference (I'm not going to mention it!)

Sure sounds better to *me* though!

___________ ________ _______
Joseph Pehrson