New member - Historical tunings

I am a harpsichordist, pianist and singer living in the UK and I have
recently become more interested in tuning particularly as related to
the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods of music.

One thing that strikes me is how difficult it is in practice to
implement some of the historical tunings accurately - for example
fifth-comma meantone. There are many theoretical treatises but very
few tell you how to tune a harpsichord (which needs retuning almost
every day) by ear or with the minimum of other equipment. Naturally I
do not mean electronic equipment, only what would be readily
available in the 17th or 18th century.

19th century and modern works mention beating, but we have to
remember that the fact that a standard A is 440 Hz was not discovered
until the mid 19th century, and the number of beats per second in
meantone tunings is constantly varying depending on which fifth or
third is being tuned.

Any thoughts on how to bridge the gap between precise historical
theory and everyday historical practice?

~~~Thomas~~~

>I am a harpsichordist, pianist and singer living in the UK and I
>have recently become more interested in tuning particularly as
>related to the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods of music.

Hello, and welcome!

>One thing that strikes me is how difficult it is in practice to
>implement some of the historical tunings accurately - for example
>fifth-comma meantone. There are many theoretical treatises but very
>few tell you how to tune a harpsichord (which needs retuning almost
>every day) by ear or with the minimum of other equipment. Naturally
>I do not mean electronic equipment, only what would be readily
>available in the 17th or 18th century.

Yes, and in fact there has been some debate (a great deal,
actually) around here as to whether some of the theoretical
tunings from this period *could* have even been tuned with
the math and tools available at the time.

>19th century and modern works mention beating, but we have to
>remember that the fact that a standard A is 440 Hz was not
>discovered until the mid 19th century, and the number of beats
>per second in meantone tunings is constantly varying depending
>on which fifth or third is being tuned.

Actually, this is also the case in equal temperament -- equal
intervals (on different roots) do not beat equally! In fact,
there has been some debate here about whether the same German
term was used for both equal-beating tuning and equal temperament,
and if it meant the German theorists did not know the difference.

>Any thoughts on how to bridge the gap between precise historical
>theory and everyday historical practice?

It's not my area of expertise, but you might try searching
the archives. Yahoo's search is tedious to use, but it does
work (sort of). You can also try a site-specific google
search (add "site:groups.yahoo.com" to the end of your query)
if your query (say, Werckmeister) is likely only to occur
here out of all the yahoo groups. Finally, you can try
Robert Walker's archives, which I can't locate at the moment.
Maybe he'll chime in.

-Carl