Werck III again and again

Werckmeister semitones & 'sliming'?

> Minor 2nds in Werckmeister III
> 90: C-Db, F-Gb
> 96: D#-E, G-Ab, G#-A, A#-B
> 102: C#-D, D-Eb
> 108: E-F, F#-G, A-Bb, B-C

Petr says:
> for this kind of music, I would prefer to use the
opposite way of intonation (which I call the "choral" intonation)
which is closer to meantone than to Pythagorean. Simply sead, the
minor seconds are too narrow for my ears. he wants *wider* minor 2nds
> and a more 'choral' (i.e. just or meantoney) approach

- to which:

> Johnny: Understood. However, you are dealing with the music from a
modern aesthetic.

??

The 'modern' aesthetic is precisely narrow equal-ish semitones doing
duty for minor seconds. This is what Petr says he dislikes!

Johnny: Exactly. It’s all about what someone now likes, not what Bach liked. It is because Werckmeister III is multiple-tunings-in-one, each key a different sentiment (to use a word), there will be a shortened semitone of the kind Petr doesn’t like. However, in light of the universe of sounds the Werckmeister III contains, a 90 cent semitone no longer is an oppressive, overwrought Romantic style violinist. It is now in a new context, wherein its difference once again welcome…or likely so.

TD: Now looking at the table, you see that C#-D (most prominent in
Brandenburg 5) is almost *exactly* equal to the equal-tempered
semitone, and F#-G only a little larger. So who's on the side of
'modern' / ET-like semitones here? I would imagine Petr happier with
semitones around 112 or 114... which scarcely exist in well-temperaments.

Johnny: Tom, it has nothing to due with semitones, the favoring of a tuning or another. They are the remainders of tunings. They are the pawns of the chess pieces. Am I imagining you are all bothered by an interpretation/misinterpretation of Petr’s comments? I’m assuming he is not as familiar with the tuning for few I know have any understanding of it.

> Werckmeister III has been slimed by the musicological community.

I'm not sure what this means. It's true that non-ET tunings were
widely ignored or deprecated through much of the 20th century. If you
only read musicologists up to 1970 or 1980, you might indeed get an
idea of 'sliming' - however, WIII was hardly worse treated than any
other irregular temperament. If you mean Isacoff ... well, I don't
think anyone should call him a musicologist.

Johnny: Stuart [Isacoff] is not a good friend. Truly, he is not a musicologist. And he loves the Early CD, has joined the AFMM Board, and tells everyone that will listen, that Werckmeister III is the best tuning for JS Bach. About the sliming….hmn…how about that this critical musical personage has no single biography? Sliming by neglect. And then there are the willful misquoting of Werckmeister, including suggestions that he changed his mind in favor of equal temperament.

Tom: The main opposition to irregular tunings recently has been from
pianists and piano tuners!!

Johnny: Guess it’s my fate to disagree with you, but that’s not true. Pianists will play anything you put in front of them, unless they have perfect pitch.

Tuners beg to tune in different things, unless its pure money to them on account it might mean more work. Bach’s single string tuning was reputed to take a half an hour; same as stated by Werckmeister, and vindicated by harpsichordist Rebecca Pechefsky.

Tom: Now in the last few decades musicology has become very much interested
in them (see Lindley as early as 1977).

Johnny: Lindley was the anti:Barbour. But Barbour who heard none of it, and who had lots of errors, and biases, was still right about some things. I’m a lousy string bassist. Never played. Different for me on a bassoon. Real comfortable.

Tom: In fact, according to what
people say in the harpsichord discussion group I post to, in the last
couple of decades WIII became a fixture in discussions of Bach tuning,
and has often been used in recordings.

Johnny: Duh, could it also mean they are right to hear Bach in WIII? It is supported by the leading Bach scholar Christoph Wolff. Maybe you should consider that it is a good decision.

Tom: So any sense of Werckmeister-martyrdom is misplaced.

Johnny: Thank you for your take. Please avoid any further religious allusions or Ozan will be amiss. ;)
What you should assume is that I have tremendous respect for Andreas Werckmeister and how he lead his life, what he accomplished, and how he produced in such a variety of ways. When I visited German bookstores for information on Werckmeister, he was always known of, but there was nothing to show. Laaber was then out of stock for reprints. The head of the Werckmeister Society, a cellist, did not believe string players could ever properly play in the tuning. Conservatory musicians graduating without ever hearing of his name. And he set the world on the road it is on.

Tom: Putting harpsichords in WIII has been done for a long time.

Johnny: And it helps them immensely in terms of instrumental color; there are 8 pure perfect fifths in Werckmeister III and they make the harpsichord a much stronger instrument than it normally sounds in equal temperament.

Tom: However, not everyone who has advocated irregular tunings has been an
unequivocal supporter of WIII. Suppose that someone prefers something
of Bendeler or Neidhardt or Kirnberger for Bach. Does that mean still
'sliming' WIII?

Johnny: Kirnberger for Kirnberger’s music? Ideal. Kirnberger’s tuning for Beethoven? Quite appropriate. Finally, Kirnberger III is practically identical to Werckmeister III, by the numbers, except for a sixth comma sharped A and a single just major third.

Bendeler for Bendeler? Of course. For something nearby to his vicinity and is previously unknown, why not? Bendeler for Stravinsky? Quite a listen, no doubt.

Neidhardt was not a musician in the sense of a player or a composer. Any composer who came after Neidhardt published his works and was familiar with Neidhardt’s works might benefit from a Neidhardt tuning, if only that itself was assured.

> My view is they don't hear it

Tom: ... Or perhaps, nowadays, they heard too much of it, if WIII was used
as a 'default' harpsichord tuning. As a harpsichordist I don't like it
so much in chords like D major (fifth too flat relative to the third)
B major (third too sharp, fifth too flat) and Ab major (Pythagorean
chords run amok). That was, actually, how I got started in this whole
business, trying to get something sounding a bit better than WIII on
my instrument. My main objection has been that the flat fifths are too
much of a sacrifice if none of the thirds are pure. To obtain a major
third such as WIII has at C-E, I would rather tune 1/5-comma between
these notes.

Johnny: Ah, finally the reason for your passion. Within the context of Bach’s music – in its proper tempo – the “transgressions” you pick out are like the human personalizing that modern “equal temperament” performance give often. You are pointing out minutiae in the context of how the master composer Bach actually composed! For your own purposes, please, continue, and tune away.

Tom: Most 'historically-informed-performance' people I know of have been
aware of tuning questions for some time now. (Which doesn't
necessarily mean they either love or hate WIII...)

~~~T~~~

Johnny: That’s why I sent the review from the PITCH CD, to demonstrate that someone who has not been misinformed by history can simply fall in love with the music, now in Werckmeister III tuning. And most possibly because it is the actual tuning intended.
________________________________________________________________________
Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@... wrote:

>
> Johnny: Tom, it has nothing to due with semitones, the favoring of
>a tuning or another. They are the remainders of tunings. They are
>the pawns of the chess pieces.

This is simply not true- some people place great importance on the
nature of the semitones in judging and creating tunings. In fact, an
enormous number of people around the world, come to think of it.

-Cameron Bobro