Reply: Recordings of Machaut and Ockeghem -- tunings

Hello, there, and there are many CD's as well as older records of music by
Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-1377) and Johannes Ockeghem (c. 1410-1495).

For a helpful survey, see

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq

Interestingly, both Machaut's later Gothic style and Ockeghem's early
Renaissance style have inspired modern performances in various
tunings. From an historical viewpoint, Machaut suggest 3-limit or
Pythagorean just intonation, which nicely brings out the unstable
quality of thirds and sixths and their cadential action, while
Ockeghem might suggest something not far from 5-limit JI, since thirds
and sixths are here more restful and "almost stable."

However, especially with non-fixed-pitch instruments (including
voices), there's considerable room for variation. Thus some major
thirds in Machaut, 81:64 in a Pythagorean tuning, might approach
either a "softened" 5:4 or an accentuated 9:7.

With Ockeghem, composing in the later 15th century, right around the
time when meantone was becoming standard on keyboards and getting its
first theoretical recognition, 5-limit might seem natural. However,
there may also be a case for Pythagorean, at least for some pieces or
textures: this might fit the tradition of narrow semitones which some
choristers of the era may still have followed, while bringing out the
independence of the individual lines.

Certainly 5-limit JI (or meantone on keyboard) wouldn't be obviously
"wrong" for Ockeghem, and it was in 1482 that Ramos (or Ramis)
described a system of 5-limit tuning for the monochord.

Most respectfully,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@value.net