Re: GrOEningen (D)! Re: [tuning] Re: Werckmeister (lengthy!)

> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@a... wrote:
> In a message dated 4/9/03 11:20:40 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> ibo.ortgies@m... writes:

Ibo: before I come back to your other points Schnitger worked in the much
larger Dutch town, which is today famous for its Schnitger-tradition:
GRONINGEN.

JR: Of course, I did not have the two cities confused in my head. I just
couldn't get the umlaut to happen in an e-mail. J

Ibo: Btw, with GrÖningen (GrOEningen) we are sometimes leaving now the North
German area to the "middle-German" Thuringian and Saxon
tradition, which - in a few documented examples - turned earlier
to well-temperaments and equal temperament.

JR: And of course "equal temperament" is a well-temperament. The trend of
"unequal temperament" in a circle of keys seems to have skipped Nederland,
but not Thuringia and Anhalt-Sachsen, and parts of Saxony, Hamburg, and
Lubeck.

Ibo: (After lengthy examples of his own…) What is your material?

JR: Beginning with a Columbia University Masters thesis called "Bach's
Tuning," I have made 5 visits to Germany, the last 4 to study the world of
Bach and to eventually write a book called Bach's Tuning. To that effect, I
have performed or produced numerous Bach works in numerous tunings, always to
prefer Werckmeister III for musical reasons. As a musician, I believe the
music reveals more than the book readings that musicologists are most
sensitive to. I don't mean to offend, but there is seldom a day that goes by
when I am not still shocked that a musicologist has missed the boat on
something that is "obvious" to certain musicians (and, of course, certain
musicologists).
As you said, you don't need to bring Werckmeister into your
> dissertation.
> I would hate to upset your track to graduation. ;)

Ibo: Thanks for the concern - just wonder why I should not know, what
belongs to my diss. topic or not.

JR: Now, I don't think you mean to get sarcastic, not with so many nice and
juicy fact morsels below. If you check above, I have used an ironic icon to
indicate that I am not being "earnestly" serious.

Ø However, there are other sources. Have you checked
> Werckmeister's own report of 1705 about the Groningen
> temperament change? It has just been published
> in English.

[Didn't find it - can you provide us with the bibliographical data)

I can only hope that the translators didn't mess it up further
about (wrong) GrOningen, instead of (right) GrÖningen.

JR: Krieger, Marcos Fernando. Dissertation: An English Translation and
Commentary on Andreas Werckmeister's Organun Gruningense Redivivum Oder
kurtze Beschribung des in der Gruningischen Scholos-Kirchen beruhmten
Orgel-Wercks Wie dasselbe anfangs erbauet und beschaffen gewesen: Und wie es
antzo auf allergnaligsten Befehl Sr. Kon. Preuss. Majestat ist renovieret und
merklich verbessert worden, University of Nebraska, 1998.

Ibo: It is however always more than advisable to read the facsimile.
Many Germans nowadays misinterpret old German, because many words or
idiomatic phrases changed meaning, sometimes slightly,
sometimes more. Still some sentences, words might not be
understood at all. I always wonder how much translators are aware
about things like this. The reprint is: Werckmeister, Andreas. Organum
Gruningense redivivum. Quedlinburg and Aschersleben, 1705. Reprint, ed. Paul
Smets. Mainz 1932.

JR: Thank you. I have both, thanks to a recent visit to Indiana University
Library. You are quite right about reading Werckmeister's German. Mizler
and Huygens and Rasch have criticized Werckmeister's "bad" German.

However, I had the good fortune to stay with Herr Lichtwitz of the great
library in Wolfenbuttal while making one of my travels. His wife Vertrude
was native to this area and good easily translate aloud in almost real time.
She found Werckmeister's writing - and I concurred - funny and erudite.
There were many double entendres and "paradoxes."

Ibo: Werckmeister does not specify any precise temperament to which
that organ had been retuned. However he mentions only precisely
that the organ was tuned before in the "old, so called Praetorian"
temperament (i. e. meantone)

JR: Wasn't it his pride to write things up because his temperament was
chosen? Why else?

Ø Werckmeister doesn't mention other people enough (everyone
> he does mention is listed in Walther's Lexicon).

Ibo: The retuning in Gröningen which Werckmeister
vaguely describes was a single case, not representative at all for
the temperament practice. Not even in W.'s region - as several
known examples up to the late 1730s show.

JR: So here, you seem to accept the logic of a single case. We must take one
at a time. For me, it is with Bach that I can begin to check other cases.
There is a logic in using Werckmeister III in his music that I will attempt
to expose sometime soon. I am sorry, I must disagree with some of your
assumptions about Central German churches and their temperament. There are
more churches per square inch in this area than anywhere on earth, and so
many church organs where a chromatacist as Bach could be welcomed.

Ibo: In the North the same development starts and can be seen between
ca. 1760-1830 (+- 20 years) - since it came so late in the North,
Werckmeister's ideas came often "too late" for retuning the still
meantone organ - most often we can find indications of retunings
from meantone directly into ET (with all the organ building
problems I sketched above)

JR: The above is true in Holland, yes: but not Thuringia. Werckmeister was
not "too late." He was early. His first publication was 1681 (the year
Telemann was born in Magdeburg (which had been completely destroyed in 1631
by the Thirty-years War). Before he was to publish in Quedlinburg he
travelled….even to Amsterdam. And he likely spoke Dutch! He was a Johnny
Appleseed of tuning ideas he had called a natural consequence of Praetorian
quarter-comma meantone. He doesn't claim to originate the idea, not does he
name it. In fact we don't have a face to put on him.

> The organ builder Wender of Muhlhausen preferred to use
> Werckmeister's tuning.

Ibo: Nothing proves that - It is an assumption on shiny chronological
and geographical coincidences

JR: It is musicology.

Ø Ahle, Bach's predecessor in Muhlhausen, was indeed friends
> with W. (including things about W. in his prose and
> voluminous writings). It would appear

It would, yes, and might appear so to some.
But the historical documents available until now on Wender do not
back up the assumptions enough, to conclude which exact temperament
he might have used.

JR: As I read it, you are endorsing a very conservative view, one that
misattributes the influence of Andreas Werckmeister on early German music.
There was no one before Werckmeister to present a tuning that would do what
was musically necessary. In some likelihood, Bach's uncle Johann Christoph
Bach may have had one of those "bumps" into the 3-year younger Werckmeister.
And Christoph spoke Dutch as well!

Ø that Bach walked into an already tuned Werckmeister

Ibo: Nothing is known, which sufficiently would confirm this or support it.
Do you know what the examination reports from these organ specify
about the temperament?

JR: Have you never heard the difference between equal tempered Buxtehude and
Werckmeister III tuned Buxtehude? It is night and day.
Ø organ in both Arnstadt and Muhlhausen. No less
> than Kuhnau spoke of Wender's insistence on Werckmeister
> tuning.

Ibo: Please provide a reference for this: when did Kuhnau state this,
and which exactly of Werckmeister's several temperaments does he
refer to?

JR: It is from the Bach-archiv article you referenced. And since Sorge and
others have credited Werckmeister's third listing is his actual favorite,
this is historically the better choice. Musical Temperament (1691) gives
quite short shrift to Werckmeister IV and V, etc.

It is important to point out that every single book Werckmeister published
through 1707 refers back to his 1691 publication (which was sold in Leipzig
and Frankfort). He never failed to favor purer intervals in diatonic keys.

Incidentally, I just conducted "Where is the newborn king of the Jews" in
Werckmeister III. I liked his Christmas Cantata, mainly because it was fun
and demonstrated well his skills in composition and form. Two older women
approached right afterwards asking where the microtones were. I had to
announce to the audience that it is quite interesting that the identifying
name of Werckmeister with tuning was so conservative in his actual use of
pitch relationships.

Ibo: Kuhnau worked in Leipzig, - around 1700 this was scarcely related
to the - quite different - organ building practice of Northern
Germany which I'm researching.

JR: Maybe, but Kuhnau had the same basic interests as Werckmeister…and they
were likely friends as well.

Ibo: If you can show the evidence for your statement by any reference,
then it would point to a significant change in Kuhnau's position
towards temperament: in 1717 he complains to Mattheson in a
letter about the organ builder's Wender's and Silbermann's
temperament practice, that they do not use the "exact temperament"
of Neidhart (i. e. ET, as Neidhart specified it, from his other
suggestions).

JR: Thanks. This is as good as saying: Wender is in Werckmeister's
chromatic tuning.

Ibo: And the Silbermann researcher Frank Harald Gress pointed to
Silbermann's usual application of some form of meantone
temperament (probably 1/4-comma-meantone, or very close) in
Silbermann's earlier decades (the later statement from Sorge about
a 1/6-komma-temperament, must be seen in the biased light of the
"Temperaturen-Streit" of the later 18th century! Sorge's
description can't simply be taken literally for Silbermann's
practice, as confirmed by other documents).

JR: Everyone is biased and no one is biased. How can you disregard whom you
like and whom you do not? Now we believe Sorge, now we disbelieve
Werckmeister: now, we reverse. The musicology means little if after reading
a big book one can only say it is all gook.

Ibo: Whatever temperament Wender actually might have applied, is not
known or documented to my knowledge. The recent Bach-Jahrbuch
article by Marcus Rathey unfortunately creates the impression from
mere chronological and geographical coincidences and reasoning,
without any proof and double checks from the organ's history.

JR: I will have to go back to Rathey to quote him, but I remember his having
particular statements by Kuhnau and Ahle, connecting Wender to Werckmeister's
tuning.

Ibo: And once same old soup again here, too: How much does an assumed
friendship between Ahle and Werckmeister tell about Wender's (not documented)
actual organ temperament in Mühlhausen? Nothing, of
course - it is an interpretation by connecting
non-temperament-related items. May be - may be not.

JR: From where I sit, mine is the important new research, while you are
sitting on the status quo.

Ibo: For an free intonating instrument it is no advantage from another
circulating temperament, since they only have to play pure above
the lowest - as pure as possible: in practice that means, +-3 to
5 cents around the pure (!) interval above the lowest note, which
makes for that purpose all well-temperaments marginal in difference!

JR: We play accurate to the cent whenever possible, at least in the mind.
The way you are discussing tuning, they all sound just about the same. I do
not hear that way, nor do I suspect Buxtehude did. Nor did Bach.
Werckmeister is ideal in every way to fit the missing link that is Thuringia.

Ibo: But an organ, was of course difficult to retune. Only to convince
the church Elders to pay the money, could be the first part of the
work, with which a project might have failed. As I said before:
large, public payed organs, serving a function in a "conservative"
society and liturgy were no lab for unprecedented temperament
experiments, to change a ca. 250 years tradition

JR: Which is why a theologian like Werckmeister was ideally place to pave the
way for well-temperament (a term that he coined in publication as
"Wohl-temperirt"). The church was on his side.

Any examples you have to the contrary will be of great interest to us.

Ibo: Today, tape is may be a solution - But, contradicting is, that I
have not seen any good baroque oboe player doing something like
that to his instrument.

JR: How about Bram Kreeftmeijer of Arnhem. He was my oboist for Brandenburg
Concerto #2…and he used scotch tape that I procured.

Ibo: And what kind of tape would you suggest
for the practice back then? I thought it is an invention of the
20th century?

JR: Back then they had no keys on oboes. One would have used beeswax on wind
instruments. On a modern bassoon playing Johann Michael Bach's "Ach bleib,…
.," I used tape as well: it works flawlessly.

Ibo: I certainly can imagine that you were part of a great performance
of concerted ensemble music, which you mention. But again, how
exactly could an argument be drawn from your recent performance for
the historical knowledge or narrowing in to the temperament
practice (not theories, which were published, without that we know
that they were practised) in North German church organs from the
documented evidence, as reported for example in examination and
other status reports etc.

JR: Your sentence above was too long for me to figure out how to respond to
it. Certainly, there is plenty of room for argument…of one type or another.
As time unravels from last weeks concerts, many revelations unwrap, sort of
like an onion peal.

> for all the usage of Werckmeister.

of which Walther doesn't write even a tiny bit!

> He's all over the place.

Ibo: Werckmeister's name in Walther's Lexicon? Yes
- but not one hint on any Werckmeister-temperament, no example of
any organ thus tuned is listed by Walther.

JR: We certainly have different eyes. I see a whole page on Werckmeister and
much less on most any other personage. I see Werckmeister's name listed
first in the article on "Temperament," and I see Werckmeister's name listed
to anything that Walther can find that would indeed connect. But no, not to
a specific organ.

Ø And take a listen to Armin Shoof's

Schoof, the organist of the Jakobi church Lübeck
- he is a friend of mine, and we are here happy in GOArt to bea
able to cooperating with himn and his parisch St. Jakobi, in an
EU-project from our institution to try to save the fabulous small
organ (1467/1637) in Lübeck, St. Jakobi, from lead corrosion which
started to destroy the oldest layer of the pipework (1467)

> performances of Buxtehude on Lubeck's St. Jacobi Kirche.

What is your opinion:
How does a (Schoof's) performance *today* tell us anything about
the actual temperaments to be found in (North German) organs in
Buxtehude's and Werckmeister's time?

JR: My opinion, and everyone that has heard Shoof's more recent Buxtehude albu
m, is that it is a different piece than its equal tempered manifestations.
Sequences have a life that are intended for subtle comparison, totally lost
in ET. People cry at the significant difference. Please be sure to share
this with Armin Shoof.

Ibo: And even if the Werckmeister temperament would unexpectedly have
been heard from the organ in St. Jakobi in around 1700 in the
organ(s) in St. Jakobi, it would not mean, that the organ(s) in
the neighbouring church St. Marien, where Buxtehude worked, must
have had a well-temperament.

JR: When, according to the records, was the St. Jakobi kleine orgel first
tuned into Werckmeister III. It is a middle ages era instrument so there
must be records.

Ibo: Since, however, nothing points to a Werckmeister temperament in
Lübeck-Jakobi in Buxtehude's time, this example goes to the big bulk of
unlikeliness.

JR: Once again, it appears there is some disconnect here. One can hear the
difference, though I admit it is difficult to make this clear through the
internet. But besides the listening, which is understandably suspect to you,
Buxtehude wrote a poem dedicated to Werckmesiter. It came in 1702, later
than the 1691 Musicalische Temperatur. He must have been a friend to write a
stanza poem in Werckmeister's honor. He must have been satisfied with what
Werckmeister's tuning had to offer. And he must have had the time to fully
decide if it was of substantial importance to the creation of his own music.

Ibo: Yes, thanks - would be nice if we could see evidence from Walther,
which would be really something new!

JR: When Walther wrote in a letter that "Bach and Buxtehude were the "only
living German organists worthy of mention," it is significant. Walther
received his Buxtehude material directly from Werckmeister, personally, in
Halberstadt. That Bach walked to spend months with Buxtehude's music is also
significant. Rather than pine about what we cannot know, why not explore
what we do know. I hope you agree.

Ibo: But I can't find any place in Walther's lexicon, where he explicitly
describes any temperament, neither theretical, nor that it is to be found
here or there.

JR: It is traditional in the Thuringian/Harz tradition not to quote the work
of other people when their works are published. Werckmeister's writings were
widely disbursed.

Ibo: And Walther's quite long entry on Werckmeister doesn't state
anything of what we have discussed here, either (except of a list
of Werckmeister's publications).

JR: Which means he had a huge amount of respect for Andreas Werckmeister, for
all of his writings. Walther mentions far less about most anyone else.
There has been a veil place over Werckmeister and his importance to the music
that followed. In the English and Dutch speaking work, little has made a
proper impact. For reasons of the truth, my advice to you is to remain
flexible.

Thanks
best regards
Ibo Ortgies

my best to you, Johnny Reinhard