New retunings

I've just added a lovely Schubert piano sonata to my web site:

http://www.idcomm.com/personal/jadl/

Piano Sonata in G, D894, sequenced by M.C. Bucknall.

As always, it is available in original 12-tET, 5-limit adaptive JI, and
(my own favorite) 7-limit adaptive JI.

WARNING: see disclaimers in TD 440.6. Use of experimental tunings by
certain individuals may cause sweating, nausea, palpitations, hot
flashes, and the uncontrollable urge to "correct" another's sense of
beauty. If these conditions persist, return immediately to 12-tET and
contact your doctor or pharmacist (government approved or otherwise).

JdL

>I've just added a lovely Schubert piano sonata to my web site:
>Piano Sonata in G, D894, sequenced by M.C. Bucknall.
> >As always, it is available in original 12-tET

Greetings,
I must question that "original 12-tET". A strong case can be made that
there was very little ET around when Schubert composed this. I would suggest
an "original Young well temperament".
I haven't the ability to listen to the above variety over the internet,
but we have listened to a lot of Schubert on acoustic pianos in various
tunings, and ET was never considered competitive when compared to the others.
Schubert needs tonal contrast.
Regards,
Ed Foote

Ed Foote wrote,

>I must question that "original 12-tET". A strong case can be made that
>there was very little ET around when Schubert composed this.

That is true as regards keyboards, but Johnny Reinhard told be Schubert was
a guitarist. If he composed on the guitar, 12-tET may indeed be the best
representation of what he had in mind. Given how freely his music wanders
around all keys, I'd be hesitant to introduce Pythagorean-like thirds in any
of them.

Greetings,
inre the use of ET for a Schubert sonata, I wrote,
>>I must question that "original 12-tET". A strong case can be made that
> there was very little ET around when Schubert composed this.

And Paul writes;
>That is true as regards keyboards, but Johnny Reinhard told be Schubert
>was
>a guitarist. If he composed on the guitar, 12-tET may indeed be the best
>representation of what he had in mind. Given how freely his music wanders
>around all keys, I'd be hesitant to introduce Pythagorean-like thirds in
>any

Hmm. There is a musicological point here I am not too qualified to
address, but Schubert's piano music doesn't often sound like guitar music to
me. "Wandering around all the keys" was a way for any early 19th century
composer to create musical tension and resolution. This was easy to do with
some consistancy, since the circle of fifths based tuning was well known at
the time. I would even call it a standard arrangement that any composer of
the age would have been familiar with .

In a Young temperament, the F#_A# third is Pythagorean, but everything
else is tempered less. It is equally important to note that there are only
five keys in this tuning that have thirds that are tempered more than ET, two
that are the same (14 cents wide) and the rest are tempered less than ET. A
well recognized palette.
There is also the small problem of how to tune an ET on a keyboard. We
know what tuning techniques were being discussed at the time, and a clean ET
would have been virtually impossible to produce with them. This weighs in on
the side on non-ET pretty heavily. Montal's instructions(1832) were in a
book "How to tune your own Piano", which would be of virtually no use to
anyone but a professional, full time tuner, few and far between in 1820..
Ellis states that in 1845, none of the Broadwood tuners were tuning anything
at all like ET. Is it logical that Schubert had grown up around it 50 years
before?
By the time Schubert was composing, keyboard temperament had settled
into a well recognized form, and I think is shows in his music. Playing his
music back to back on an ET piano and a well tempered piano, pianists I have
sought opinions from have immediately been attracted to the latter. The
modulations make sense in their movement into and out of differing levels of
dissonance/consonance. After a short time listening to a well-tempered
version of this music, ET sounds harsh and tedious to them.
We are going to try to include some Schubert on our next CD, "The
Well-Tempered Piano". Recording begins in June, hoping to have it in the
package by next November.
Regards,
Ed Foote

[JdL:]
>>WARNING: see disclaimers in TD 440.6. Use of experimental tunings by
>>certain individuals may cause sweating, nausea, palpitations, hot
>>flashes, and the uncontrollable urge to "correct" another's sense of
>>beauty. If these conditions persist, return immediately to 12-tET and
>>contact your doctor or pharmacist (government approved or otherwise).

[Daniel Wolf, TD 444.7:]
>That's not exactly the case.

No. Just havin' a li'l fun...

>Why don't you try retuning some of the wonderful chamber music WITHOUT
>keyboard? The Schubert two celli Quintet would be much more more
>interesting -- not to mention plausible -- in adaptive JI than any of
>the keyboard works.

I'd be glad to. Do you happen to know of any MIDI sequences of the
above works? I'll check on prs.net.

Plausibility is in the ear of the beholder. When it comes to piano,
it's a shock to hear ANY movement in pitch, at first. With strings,
we have past experience with motion, vibrato and otherwise. With piano,
it takes time to get used to the possibility; once it is "possible", it
becomes a lot more "plausible" at any given moment in time.

JdL