ET history

Dear All,

I was wondering what advancement in technology allowed 12 tone ET to become possible. I'm having trouble convincing my music teacher that Bach didn't use ET. Other than the historical evidence, is there anything (perhaps in the music itself) that suggests he couldn't have used it? Thanks!

M

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You may continue to have trouble trying to change your teacher's beliefs. If
history is not persuasive enough, you can find the music supports
Werckmeister III. I have been doing studies of Bach's use of the opening
melodic interval in his most prominent pieces and the results support the
supposition. Bach knew about the variations of the 39 melodic intervals of
Werckmeister III. Perhaps you could get a copy of Igor Kipnis playing Bach's
Chromatic Fantasy in Werckmeister III. The aural landmarks are unmistakable.
A comparison with a 12 equal performance is sickly by comparison.

best, Johnny Reinhard
(working on the programs for the concert on Saturday)

>Dear All,

>I was wondering what advancement in technology
>allowed 12 tone ET to become
>possible. I'm having trouble convincing my
>music teacher that Bach didn't
>use ET. Other than the historical evidence, is
>there anything (perhaps in
>the music itself) that suggests he couldn't
>have used it? Thanks!

>M

Matt,

This topic is covered in Owen Jorgensen's mammoth tome Tuning (Michigan University Press), which has a lengthy subtitle that I won't remember correctly. I probably won't quite remember the argument correctly either, and don't have the book at hand to check it. But the gist is, in the 18th century musicians didn't know enough about acoustics to understand how to tune a stringed keyboard instrument according to the speed of beats in an almost-in-tune interval. They knew the math to figure out the spacing of frets and the length of organ pipes, but couldn't accurately count the beats caused by two vibrating strings. As the science of acoustics developed in the 19th century thanks to major contributions by Helmholtz and others, it became possible to smooth out the beat rates among intervals along the scale and more closely approach 12-pitch ET. According to Jorgensen, the first "scientific" method for tuning a piano in true 12tet, with charts on how many beats per second each interval in the scale should produce, was published in 1917 by E.B. White. Everything up until then, he contends, had only been approximations, and he gives abundant documentary evidence. I highly recommend the book, written with passion and a high sense of philosophical purpose. Let your teacher slog through Tuning and see if he can rebut it.

Yours,

Kyle Gann

matt writes:

<< I was wondering what advancement in technology allowed 12 tone ET to
become
possible. I'm having trouble convincing my music teacher that Bach didn't
use ET. Other than the historical evidence, is there anything (perhaps in
the music itself) that suggests he couldn't have used it? >>

First, he would have had to have tuned it. If he did, I am sure he would
have documented HOW he did this. That is the tricky thing about ET, it
doens't depend on decisions of sensual nature, it requires the use of
objective checks, and nobody, but nobody was writing anything down that would
have described the necessary checks and tests for ET before 1830 or so.
But really, all that aside, if your teacher plays Bach on a WT instrument,
then on an ET instrument, and can't hear the improvement, then none of the
evidence elsewhere is going to make much difference.
Regards ,
Ed Foote RPT
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/
www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Matt Henry" <yrnehttam@h...> wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I was wondering what advancement in technology allowed 12 tone ET
to become
> possible. I'm having trouble convincing my music teacher that Bach
didn't
> use ET. Other than the historical evidence, is there anything
(perhaps in
> the music itself) that suggests he couldn't have used it? Thanks!
>
> M

hi matt,

i was going to recommend the jorgenson book, but kyle beat me to it.
the darn thing weighs a ton, but some selective photocopying in the
library might help get your point across. the debate over 12-equal or
anything close to it vs. older tunings where c major sounds purer was
raging heavily in the 18th century. you can read excepts from this
debate in jorgenson and get a sense of how tastes in tuning changed
over a few short decades.

in any case, i can sympathize with your situation. i've been involved
in an e-mail exchange with one of the world's most famous music
theorists, and he doesn't believe that meantones very different from
12-equal would ever have actually gotten any musical use, or could.
on what grounds? "cognitive necessity". appeals to historical
documentation, he calls "empty".

best,
paul