capppella, singing intervals, 19-note kb. etc.

About the hair-splitting:
Italians
(a) use both 'a capella' and 'a cappella' (the latter is more usual these
days).
(b) couldn't care a damn about spelling in the sense that they write
'comune' and 'accomodare' where English respects its Latin origin more and
has 'commune' and 'accommodate'.

I would have thought that one's ears were quite sufficient for listening to
vocal - or any other - music. If you can't hear the difference there's not
a lot of point in worrying about it anyway. Maybe a group like the Hilliard
sings too broad a repertoire to be a useful term of reference. Then many
fine choral groups today have a percentage of members who have 'perfect
pitch', a phenomenon which probably didn't exist in a period in which
organs and other instruments varied from town to town in Italy. The other
day I heard Michel P�r�s 'Ensemble Organum' singing in a church in Cremona;
I was glad to have read Margo's pythagorean piece and appreciated being
able to listen to chords built up of perfect 4ths - that to us would be
discords with clashing major 2nds - in 4-part P�rotin (conductus 'Deus
misertus'). However, that piece was fortunately near the beginning; tuning
later suffered. They also sang VERY loud all the time (as if they were in
Notre-Dame when in fact they were in a tiny church) and scooped quite a lot.
Normally any good group of singers, whether amateur or profis, whether they
understand the first thing about tuning or not, will tend to pitch any
interval in tune. (You can try that out by playing an open fifth - even a
lousy narrow ET one! - and asking almost anyone to pitch the third. They
will normally be better at doing that than your average piano.)
There is quite a bit of Renaissance music if well sung a cap. that may end
up slightly higher or lower than it started, simply because pitches are
being constantly adjusted. This minimal change in pitch shouldn't worry us,
though of course it disturbs anyone with 'perfect pitch'.
I play a chromatic (19 key) hpd and by retuning my d flat to give me a
second (lower) D - and also having 2 f#s and 2 b flats - can amuse myself
with JI. There of course it is impossible to do what singers do BUT if I
play, say, a g minor triad and then a B flat major one, even though NO note
remains the same one, because the sound is just the ear is tricked into
accepting the tiny change.

Re Salinas and the 19-note kb. S says 1/3 comma m-t is a most difficult
one to tune. I can vouch for that.
I wouls imagine that even those who had 19-note kbs (and there were quite a
lot in Italy c1600 apparently) probably all had their little differences in
tuning them. 1/4 comma was basically the most obvious way - and I don't
believe Costeley really wanted 1/3 comma even tho he talks about the
intervals being the same, 'cos otherwise he could have composed a piece
that went round the full circle (like Mayone did for Colonna's 31 note
outfit); but he didn't, presumably because he rejected 1/3 comma 5ths (i.e.
'19-note ET') since he was apparently primarily interested in people
singing good if not perfect intervals. 1/3 comma 5th just aren't nice to
sing.

Christopher Stembridge, Wiesen 167, 39040 PFITSCH (BZ), Italy.
Fax/Tel +39 0472 76 73 66
<http://www.continuo.com/stembridge/chris.htm>