Scratch scratch scratch

I see from my most recent drive-by reading of the list that that nasty
old incurable pustulating itchy red rash of Bach's tuning has broken
out again. Mildly entertaining to see Johnny and Brad galloping at
great speed and leveling their lances at one another yet again, Brad
sporting the coat of arms of the Knights of the Holy Squiggles whilst
the goode Sir Johnny rides under the standard of Lord Werkmeister the
3rd. Funny, actually, how each seems equally assured of his own
victory, though they go about it in slightly different ways. Also
amusing to read the cheers and jeers of the onlookers, of which,
having wandered into town as I sometimes do of a Sunday afternoon, I
count myself among.

Don't know who it was who did so, but to call Brad "insane" is a bit
over the top. If anything, he could be accused of a bit of puffery,
saying as he does in his on-line bio that he "discovered Bach's
tuning". T'would be much more reasonable and becoming to state that he
has proposed a reasonable hypothetical solution to the problem. His
"evidence", i.e. Bach's music, is no evidence at all, since last time
I looked there was no temperament indication in any of the works. What
Brad finds sounds nice is no more than that, of course, a dead horse
we've all whipped many times over. Ditto for what Johnny finds nice on
his ear. Problem is we all live in a musical environment of ET, and
grew up hearing it from Day One, even though many of us in our adult
lives have made it our habit to avoid it like the plague. Try as we
might to deny it, this simple fact has made us somewhat immune to its
sound regardless of how much we may now decry its foulness, a state of
aural preconditioning which was most definitely NOT exist for
musicians of Bach's time. Thus those who claim our modern appraisals
of sonic quality are irrelevant to historic practice are certainly
arguing from an intellectually superior position.

Johnny never seems to tire of throwing great fistfuls of apple seeds
in the form vast unsupported sweeping statements, such as how
Werckmeister's ideas "were all the rage" or claiming to know the
content of Bach's personal library, as if the presence of a book on
the shelves indicates absolute agreement with all therein, which is a
ridiculous assertion on the face of it (I have many books which
contain both wheat and chaff). I also like the way he conveniently
sidesteps other historical assertions, such as Werckmeister's own
condemnation of the hideous and lame sound of 1/4 comma fifths -
squirm and dance and bend and twist as one may, the simple historical
fact is that this condemnation exists, and one cannot but wonder if
Bach also had this book on his shelf, having seen that it, too, had
been on the Best Seller list since it's publication in 1698, the
writings of W being "all the rage" as they were, and if so, why he
leaned toward vintage rage over more modern rage. Rage must be like
single malt, or a good wine, I guess. I also wonder as to Johnny's
experience in the broader world of contemporary music making, what
with the statement, "That's why we work so hard to deliver the highest
quality performances in a concert laboratory. The de facto condition
is almost 100% equal temperament for Bach, which he did not do."
Frankly, I don't know ANYONE who uses ET for any Bach, except those
poor unfortunate organists who have no choice in the matter, and the
whole swath of modern instrument musicians who are largely unaware of
any other possibility for any literature. Oh, and there was the
harpsichordist John Gibbons who once sneered at me as I started tuning
that I shouldn't set any of the "biodegradable" temperaments, because
ET "sounds better"... but that was way back in 1974 or so. Whatever
happened to him, anyway? Seems as though his career sort of, well,
biodegraded back in the mid-1990's or so.

All that aside, as someone pointed out, the truth of the matter is
that we'll never know. Personally, I find the idea rather questionable
that Bach had but one system in mind for all applications, and anyone
with a reasonable familiarity with the literature cannot help but
wonder how much the harpsi was just washboard (as LA harpsichordist
Neil Roberts used to say) and the winds and strings more or less
ignored the keyboard temperament, playing intervals more according to
their "proper proportions", exactly as Rameau says it should be done.
But this won't satisfy the ax grinders none.

Me, I think the shoe temperament sounds much better than the gourd,
but I would consider the spoon as a possibility as well.

Ciao,

P

Paul Poletti wrote:
> Frankly, I don't know ANYONE who uses ET for any Bach, except those
> poor unfortunate organists who have no choice in the matter, and the
> whole swath of modern instrument musicians who are largely unaware of
> any other possibility for any literature.

Does Angela Hewitt retune the modern pianos she plays on, or does she use the "standard" non-ET "stretched" piano tuning one typically finds at a concert?

> Personally, I find the idea rather questionable
> that Bach had but one system in mind for all applications,

Perhaps not even the same system for two different performances of the same work? Was the tuning of a keyboard instrument always under control of the composer/performer?

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...> wrote:
>

>
> Does Angela Hewitt retune the modern pianos she plays on, or does she
> use the "standard" non-ET "stretched" piano tuning one typically finds
> at a concert?

I don't consider any performance on modern piano to be relevant. The
sound of the modern piano is so far removed from the sound of any
instrument Bach knew that the whole issue of "what Bach heard in his
inner ear" becomes moot. Ditto modern orchestral instruments, what
with there altered timbres and the general use of vibrato which more
or less destroys our ability to judge the fine points of tuning. It's
a curious disconnect that some people can go on endlessly about
something as subtle as temperament while claiming that something far
more obvious and profound - the timbre of the instrument - is not
important. Go figure.

>
> Was the tuning of a keyboard instrument always under control
> of the composer/performer?
>
Generally, the harpsichordist was the tuner, as is proper today as
well. Organs were tuned by builders. A player could tune a small
organ, and probably did, as most of the articles published about how
one can do it for themselves mention organs as well as harpsichords
and clavichords.

The composer was as often as not the keyboard player, conducting the
performace from the harpsichord or organ.

Ciao,

P

Paul Poletti wrote:
> I don't consider any performance on modern piano to be relevant. The
> sound of the modern piano is so far removed from the sound of any
> instrument Bach knew that the whole issue of "what Bach heard in his
> inner ear" becomes moot. Ditto modern orchestral instruments, what
> with there altered timbres and the general use of vibrato which more
> or less destroys our ability to judge the fine points of tuning. It's
> a curious disconnect that some people can go on endlessly about
> something as subtle as temperament while claiming that something far
> more obvious and profound - the timbre of the instrument - is not
> important. Go figure.

This debate isn't exactly new, either -- IIRC Stokowski took a lot of heat for his transcriptions of Bach. But it seems like far more liberties are accepted with the music of J.S. Bach than are accepted for Telemann, Rameau, Handel, or Vivaldi. Stokowski's interpretations of Bach will survive, while I'm not at all certain about Sir Hamilton Harty's version of the "Water Music" or performances of the Vivaldi concertos for sopranino recorder on a modern piccolo. :)