tuning sixth comma meantone on a harpsichord

Does anyone have a good tuning recipe for tuning 6th-comma meantone on a
harpsichord.

Stipulation: it must play in F minor.

Thank you very much in advance,

Johnny Reinhard

>Does anyone have a good tuning recipe for tuning 6th-comma meantone on a
>harpsichord.
>
>Stipulation: it must play in F minor.

Yes, the "bonus" section on my page
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/practical.html
describes that process of setting up regular 1/6 comma 5ths, and the reason it works is described over here:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/tetrasect.html
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/meantone.html

After you've done the first six regular 5ths F-C-G-D-A-E you can continue however you want to. Make the whole thing regular 1/6, or make a Vallotti, or modify the Vallotti into a Young #1 (tweaking the F and B slightly), or whatever.

If you want an especially good F minor, finish it off with my main Bach recipe there. From the E go in pure 5ths E-B-F#-C#, and then make the remaining 5ths C#-G#-D#-A# 1/12 each (i.e. in character only half as twangy as the starting 5ths). With practice, an entire 8-foot register takes 10 minutes or less. Check all your 4ths and 5ths for the right character, all the way up the treble, as a way to be sure you are getting pure octaves.

My new CDs include demonstration of F minor:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1003.html
prelude and fugue of WTC 1; three-part invention (sinfonia) BWV 795

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/cd1002.html
Jesus Christus unser Heiland, BWV 689; prelude and fugue in Fischer's _Ariadne musica_

Bradley Lehman

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@a... wrote:
>
> Does anyone have a good tuning recipe for tuning 6th-comma meantone
on a
> harpsichord.
>
> Stipulation: it must play in F minor.
>
> Thank you very much in advance,
>
> Johnny Reinhard

Two questions arise:

What technical method is to be used for the tuning - ear alone or
electronic gizmos?

What composer's F minor is it, and does F minor include the chords of
Ab and Db major?

Bear in mind that some composers would have written in F minor
specifically to exploit some of the 'bad' intervals in normal Eb-G#
meantone. However if the piece includes Ab major triads one can
probably rule this out as a musical catastrophe.

In any case, '1/6 comma meantone' can be adequately tuned for any
historical purpose by taking pure major thirds, then making them a
little bit sharp, then a little bit sharper still, then dividing the
thirds into four regular fifths a little bit flat. Then you continue
with regular slightly flat fifths and somewhat sharp thirds. The only
remaining question is which accidentals you want to be sharps and
which flats. As implied earlier, special effects arise when the
keyboard has G# and C# but the composer writes Ab and Db.

(Oh, that should have been *three* questions: how many keys has the
harpsichord per octave?...)

The whole question begins to resemble a can of worms, but that's
normal with historical tuning, unless you happen to be clairvoyant.

~~~T~~~

P.S. Here's my attempt at present-day clairvoyance: Someone wants to
play the Bach F minor concerto in meantone. But when they use a
standard recipe for meantone it sounds horrid. So they want to brush
the horridness along to other keys by transposing the wolf...
Now tell me how wrong I am.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Dent" <stringph@g...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@a... wrote:
> >
> > Does anyone have a good tuning recipe for tuning 6th-comma
meantone
> on a
> > harpsichord.
> >
> > Stipulation: it must play in F minor.
> >
> > Thank you very much in advance,
> >
> > Johnny Reinhard
>
>
> Two questions arise:
>
> What technical method is to be used for the tuning - ear alone or
> electronic gizmos?
>
> What composer's F minor is it, and does F minor include the chords
of
> Ab and Db major?
>
> Bear in mind that some composers would have written in F minor
> specifically to exploit some of the 'bad' intervals in normal Eb-G#
> meantone. However if the piece includes Ab major triads one can
> probably rule this out as a musical catastrophe.
>
> In any case, '1/6 comma meantone' can be adequately tuned for any
> historical purpose by taking pure major thirds, then making them a
> little bit sharp, then a little bit sharper still, then dividing
the
> thirds into four regular fifths a little bit flat. Then you
continue
> with regular slightly flat fifths and somewhat sharp thirds. The
only
> remaining question is which accidentals you want to be sharps and
> which flats. As implied earlier, special effects arise when the
> keyboard has G# and C# but the composer writes Ab and Db.
>
> (Oh, that should have been *three* questions: how many keys has the
> harpsichord per octave?...)
>
> The whole question begins to resemble a can of worms, but that's
> normal with historical tuning, unless you happen to be clairvoyant.
>
> ~~~T~~~
>
> P.S. Here's my attempt at present-day clairvoyance: Someone wants
to
> play the Bach F minor concerto in meantone. But when they use a
> standard recipe for meantone it sounds horrid. So they want to
brush
> the horridness along to other keys by transposing the wolf...
> Now tell me how wrong I am.

My attempt at clairvoyance tells me Brad is haunting you. Johnny
Reinhard would never want to play the Bach F minor concerto in an
open meantone system, not in a million years . . .