Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Re: Swiss scholar...

> 'If some french authors of the late 17th- and early 18th-century
> wrote tuning-instructions with 2 wide 5ths, then only,
> because they had (completely) misunderstood Marin Mersenne:
> Mersenne demands in his "TRAITE de l'HARMONIE UNIVERSELLE(1627)"
> instructions for mean-tone:
> The 5ths must be 'diminished" as
> referred in his score at example 'd';
> There Rameau labeled only 2 of that 5ths,
> -that both have to be tuned downwards-
> with "f": that represents "forte".
> Without any doubt that means:
> for each of them are also downwards flattend 5ths,
> due to the arised lower tone (in the quinte-interval).
> But that was misinterpreted by Jean Denis in 1643 (...)

I am really tired of that old (and to me, completely unconvincing) argument against the musical sensibility of the French. I have been dealing with this since I first started studying historical temperament in 1983 (and using the attributed Rameau unequal temp a lot, because it really works). They've got a bad rap.

The 17th and 18th century French get this regular slap, in some of the scholarly press (and here it comes up yet again!), that they allegedly tuned their Bb and Eb extra-low, breaking the regularity of meantone, ONLY BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO STUPID AND IGNORANT TO KNOW BETTER in reading old instructions. Balderdash. They did it, *I* believe, because they actually LISTENED TO THEIR INSTRUMENTS and realized that the immediate musical improvement to the notes D# and A# outweighed the gentle (and forgiveable) loss of intonational purity in Eb and Bb. They tuned those 5ths wide on purpose to be able to use all of Eb, D#, Bb, and A# in music.

Try it. At real harpsichords. Play 17th century and early 18th century French music that uses both D# and Eb, or that uses both A# and Bb.

I also have some related videos about this (including the "more info" sidebar with each one of them):

'F sharp and G flat are not the same note'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnzGDx-JJ1o

'Harpsichord tuning: late 17th century "Ordinaire" style'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34oglw7kiJc

'Harpsichord tuning: 17th-Century regular...morphed to Bach's'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfK3blfKE04

Brad Lehman

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

Everybody always bad rappin the Marquis De Sade!- Lord Buckley

/^_,',',',_ //^ /Kraig Grady_ ^_,',',',_
Mesotonal Music from:
_'''''''_ ^North/Western Hemisphere: North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>

_'''''''_ ^South/Eastern Hemisphere:
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',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',

Brad Lehman wrote:
>
> > 'If some french authors of the late 17th- and early 18th-century
> > wrote tuning-instructions with 2 wide 5ths, then only,
> > because they had (completely) misunderstood Marin Mersenne:
> > Mersenne demands in his "TRAITE de l'HARMONIE UNIVERSELLE(1627)"
> > instructions for mean-tone:
> > The 5ths must be 'diminished" as
> > referred in his score at example 'd';
> > There Rameau labeled only 2 of that 5ths,
> > -that both have to be tuned downwards-
> > with "f": that represents "forte".
> > Without any doubt that means:
> > for each of them are also downwards flattend 5ths,
> > due to the arised lower tone (in the quinte-interval).
> > But that was misinterpreted by Jean Denis in 1643 (...)
>
> I am really tired of that old (and to me, completely unconvincing)
> argument against the musical sensibility of the French. I have been
> dealing with this since I first started studying historical temperament
> in 1983 (and using the attributed Rameau unequal temp a lot, because it
> really works). They've got a bad rap.
>
> The 17th and 18th century French get this regular slap, in some of the
> scholarly press (and here it comes up yet again!), that they allegedly
> tuned their Bb and Eb extra-low, breaking the regularity of meantone,
> ONLY BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO STUPID AND IGNORANT TO KNOW BETTER in reading
> old instructions. Balderdash. They did it, *I* believe, because they
> actually LISTENED TO THEIR INSTRUMENTS and realized that the immediate
> musical improvement to the notes D# and A# outweighed the gentle (and
> forgiveable) loss of intonational purity in Eb and Bb. They tuned those
> 5ths wide on purpose to be able to use all of Eb, D#, Bb, and A# in music.
>
> Try it. At real harpsichords. Play 17th century and early 18th century
> French music that uses both D# and Eb, or that uses both A# and Bb.
>
> I also have some related videos about this (including the "more info"
> sidebar with each one of them):
>
> 'F sharp and G flat are not the same note'
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnzGDx-JJ1o > <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnzGDx-JJ1o>
>
> 'Harpsichord tuning: late 17th century "Ordinaire" style'
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34oglw7kiJc > <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34oglw7kiJc>
>
> 'Harpsichord tuning: 17th-Century regular...morphed to Bach's'
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfK3blfKE04 > <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfK3blfKE04>
>
> Brad Lehman
>
>

🔗Andreas Sparschuh <a_sparschuh@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Brad Lehman <bpl@...> wrote:
>
about his own
> completely unconvincing
> argument against the musical sensibility of the French.

Brad:
> I have been... using the attributed Rameau unequal temp a lot,
>because it
doesn't
> really work
properly in practice.
>
> The 17th and 18th century French get this regular slap,
that disturbes the circle of 5ths
> ONLY BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO STUPID AND IGNORANT TO KNOW BETTER
>in reading old instructions.
of Marin Mersenne's original papers or at least Barbour's articles.

>.. because he
> actually LISTENED TO HIS INSTRUMENT and realized
relative
> to the notes D# and A#
the in-
> forgiveable loss of intonational purity in Eb and Bb.
Almost nobody
> tuned those
> 5ths wide on purpose to be
less
> able to use all of Eb, D#, Bb, and A# in music.
>
Simply
> Play 17th century and early 18th century
> French music that uses both D# and Eb, or that uses both A# and Bb.
and you will realize: Wide 5ths offend the ears.

All interpreters in
http://www.bsherman.org/WTC.htm
avoid wide 5ths:
"The other part of Bach's title - "Appropriately tuned" - is also
confusing. For a century or so, musicians assumed that it referred to
equal temperament, the modern tuning used by pianists, where every
harmony is just a little out of tune but is equally usable. Then in
the 1970s and 80s, the prevailing view became that it referred to
slightly unequal Baroque temperaments. These, like equal temperament,
allow you to modulate to distant keys without sounding painfully out
of tune, but they also add flavor to the varying keys. Just when a
consensus was forming for this viewpoint, at least one scholar began
to argue that equal temperament was the stronger candidate after all.
But the pendulum seems to have swung away from him. After all, Bach's
son Carl Philip Emanuel described his dad as "Anti-Rameau" (in other
words, anti-equal-temperament);...

***does that even refer to the eary Rameau's alleged brode 5ths?***

..and Bach was said to tune his own instruments, meaning he didn't
trust anyone else to do it; he was also said to have tuned his thirds
a little sharp. How sharp? Once again, period practice - and its
importance - hasn't been easy to pin down in the WTC."

original quote of C.P.E. Bach in a letter to Kirnberger concerning
tuning can be found in:
http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0027-4631(195010)36%3A4%3C485%3AMF%22BR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C&cookieSet=1
on temperament
Further: "That my basic principles and those of my late father are
anti- Rameau you may loudly proclaim."

The same statement Bach's son C.P.E. sounds in an other version:

"Bach and "The Art of Temperament", by J. Murray Barbour The Musical
Quarterly © 1947 Oxford University Press.
http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0027-4631(194701)33%3A1%3C64%3ABA%22AOT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W
"... that my fundamental principles and those of my late father are
anti- Rameau. ..."
as Barbour translates from his footnote 6 on p.68 chapter IV:
german quote:
J.P. Kirnberger 'Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik'
Part 2 , Berlin 1774, 2nd ed: 1779 p.188
"Dass meine und meines seeligen Vaters Grundsätze ANTIRAMEAUSCH
sind können sie laut sagen"

Hence such early Rameau pseudo-french 5ths of ~704Cents
can be considered as almost irrelevant at least for Bach.

Barbour continues on p.72:
"According to Sorge, Silbermann tmpered his 5ths by only 1/6th
comma... Sorge did not approve such an old-fashioned method
following the illustrious example of J.S.Bach."
that usually rejected Silbermann's wrong wide 5ths as faulty
and played on them as long as Silbermann escaped from the church
away from the ugly sound, alike in Brad's broade 5th tuning.

All we can do when haring that 704Cents: Absquatulate!

later on p.86 he refers back to that:
"As we have already seen, Sorge writing only 2 years before
Bach's death, gave the name of the Leipzig-Cantor as chief
wittness against the reactionary tuning-practice of Silbermann."

Sorge's argumet works also against the Lehman's
"reactionary" wolf-5th of ~704Cents inbetween Bb-F
also labeled in Brad's hypothesis as an "diminished-6th" A#-F.

Barbour also wrote there an summary conclusion about Rameau on p.78:
"Because of his advoacay of ET during most of his (Rameau's) life,
we hesitate that Rameau generally used a meantone-tuning
tuning somewhat on the sharp side,...."
as Brad wrongly tries to imply upon Bach.

somewhat later Barbour concludes:
" In Rameau's opera 'Castor and Pollux' the total compass
is Gb to B#, or 17 degrees. One aria: Pollux's "Je vole" has
the compass Ab to A#.
Rameau must have undoubtely have used something closely approaching
ET here, whatever he did in clavecin music."

Considering that large range of compass in key-modulation:
It is difficult to presume that Rameau had used broade 5ths anywhere.

Appearently Brad's alleged wolf-5th disagrees with Barbour's
definition of "wohl-temperiert"
in mismatch against most coeval German authors at that time:
"To be "well-tempered" a clavier needed only to have its worst
notes rid of the "wolfes"; the most used keys remained those in best
tune."

Stictly spoken:
Barbour excludes defintively
all "wolf"-5ths larger than 3:2 or ~702Cents.

That results in consequence:
Even Barbour stictly rules out Brad's pesumed hypothesis.

From all that counter-arguments, there arises the question:
Why does Brad continue to insinuate ~704Cents into Bach's squiggles?
in spite all that historically evident refutations.

Come on Brad, this is barely ridiculous!

Yours Sincerely amazed about such an stolidity
A.S.

🔗Paul Poletti <paul@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Andreas Sparschuh" <a_sparschuh@...>
wrote:
>

>
> [quoting somebody else] After all, Bach's
> son Carl Philip Emanuel described his dad as "Anti-Rameau" (in other
> words, anti-equal-temperament);...
>
> ***does that even refer to the early Rameau's alleged brode 5ths?***

Not bluhdy likely. After all, it was Rameau's later support of ET
which really made him famous in a temperament sense, thanks to the big
fight with Rosseau. I would think that anybody from the next
generation (CPE) would identify Rameau with ET and NOT with modified
meantone.

>
> Hence such early Rameau pseudo-french 5ths of ~704Cents
> can be considered as almost irrelevant at least for Bach.

Uh, excuse me if I'm stupid, but what can be "pseudo-French" about
anything having to do with Rameau? He's not Lully, after all...

>
> All we can do when haring that 704Cents: Absquatulate!

Andreas, my dear fellow, I am most interested in knowing what truly
exceptional super-human auditory capability you posses which allows
you, upon hearing them, to tell a 704 cent fifth from a 700 cent
fifth. They both beat extremely slowly by exactly the same amount.
Have you got some sort of advanced technology in your ears, perhaps a
harmonic Babelfish or some such?

>
> Sorge's argumet works also against the Lehman's
> "reactionary" wolf-5th of ~704Cents inbetween Bb-F
> also labeled in Brad's hypothesis as an "diminished-6th" A#-F.

I really think that the application of the word "wolf" to a fifth
which is only tempered by 2 cents is completely without any
intellectual validity. Generally the term is only applied to fifths
which are so badly out of tune that they sound quite markedly harsh
(actually, I wonder who was the first to use the term "wolf" for a
fifth, and NOT a third, as Preatorius did. Anybody know?). This simply
is not the case with 704 cent fifths. If you want us to even consider
your arguments, you should avoid such "reactionary" language which
only makes you look like some fundamentalist wacko who lets his dogma
run away with his logic.

>
> Stictly spoken:
> Barbour excludes defintively
> all "wolf"-5ths larger than 3:2 or ~702Cents.

>
> That results in consequence:
> Even Barbour stictly rules out Brad's pesumed hypothesis.
>
> From all that counter-arguments, there arises the question:
> Why does Brad continue to insinuate ~704Cents into Bach's squiggles?
> in spite all that historically evident refutations.

Well, maybe Brad isn't cherry picking his "historically evident
refutations", like you are. Maybe Brad has actually READ some original
17th and 18th century manuscripts instead of relying on some guy from
the middle of the 20th century who thought the history of temperament
was some Gradus ad Parnassum towards the perfection of ET. Maybe Brad
isn't trying to sweep Werckmeister 1691-V under the rug, which has a
Godzilla-sized (assuming 704 to be wolfish) wide fifth of 708 cents!
Or worse yet, Werckmeister's 1681-II/1691-IV 1/3 comma temperament,
with TWO (count 'em!!) yes, TWO über-nasty wide fifths of -hold onto
your seat, Andreas- 709,8 cents!!!! Although I would tend to agree
with Andreas that fifths tempered by so much (be they wide OR narrow)
are approaching wolf-quality, though probably better to call them mere
cur fifths. Even at the end of the 1690's, after he'd cleaned up his
act a little, and like Rameau, changed his mind, and starting saying
that anything in the area of 1/4 comma and more was "hideous and
lame", that poor old sod Werckmeister wasn't bright enough to figure
out that wide fifths of any stripe are an abomination unto the Lord.
Poor old W, somebody should have given him a copy of Barbour, that
would have set him straight!
>
> Come on Brad, this is barely ridiculous!

And how!

>
> Yours Sincerely amazed about such an stolidity
> A.S.
>
Yours sincerely amazed at such twisting and bending of history. And
for a native German speaker at that, who ought to at least know his
own history. Scandalous indeed!

Ciao,

🔗Tom Dent <stringph@...>

🔗Afmmjr@...

🔗Paul Poletti <paul@...>

🔗Afmmjr@...

Paul: Which brings me again back to the same old question which I keep
asking and nobody seems to be able to answer: why all this modern
fascination with Werckmister III? IV is a bit extreme with those 1/3
comma fifths, though the fact that W proposed it means we shouldn't
reject it outright.

Johnny: I thought we had spoken about this. WIV was no so much proposed by
Werckmeister, but respectfully included. The indications are that WIV
precedes WIII historically. Trost, who had the organ jobs in both Quedlinburg and
afterwards, in Halberstadt, was likely using WIV. Reading through Muscial
Temperament, Werckmeister speaks for chapters about how an "unmentioned" organ
tuner favored the Trost method.

Once WIV/1681-II was used by one of Werckmeister's sons when he took over
for his father in Quedlinburg.
WV has no historical footprints, nor WVI (however unmusical it is claimed to
be).

WIII, however, historically been connected to Werckmeister in largest
proportion, incomparable to any other variant...why? Simply, it is the bulk of his
book. It is the first one listed as correct. It is the recommended
chromatic tuning so appropriate for the chromaticist champion, JS Bach. It sounds
great for Bach. It is critical to the keyboard improvisation in a full circle
required by the likes of Werckmeister (even as his compositions were in C
major and G major).

Hope this helps. Johnny

But what's wrong with Werckmeister V? Yes, I know,
it has a DWiF: Dreaded Wide Fifth - uh uh, cooooties! But in a lot of
ways, it is so much better than III.

Isn't wonderful the way modern folk look at the historical record and
reject that which they don't understand as being somehow "wrong", or
pretend it isn't there altogether? Funny, that.

Or maybe not so...

Ciao,

**************Vote for your city's best dining and nightlife. City's Best
2008. (http://citysbest.aol.com?ncid=aolacg00050000000102)

🔗Paul Poletti <paul@...>

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

> WV has no historical footprints, nor WVI (however unmusical it is
claimed to
> be).
>
> WIII, however, historically been connected to Werckmeister in largest
> proportion, incomparable to any other variant...why? Simply, it is
the bulk of his
> book. It is the first one listed as correct. It is the recommended
> chromatic tuning so appropriate for the chromaticist champion, JS
Bach. It sounds
> great for Bach. It is critical to the keyboard improvisation in a
full circle
> required by the likes of Werckmeister (even as his compositions
were in C
> major and G major).

Perhaps, but does any of this merit the fact that V has been
COMPLETELY ignored? I suspect it is more a product of the modern
WiFobia (WiF = Wide Fifth), which produced a long line of intervalic
prejudice, from Barbour to Jorgenson with his pseudo-scientific
"harmonic waste" to attitudes such as those exhibited by Andreas which
flies in the face of the historical record.

What is VERY interesting about V is that its pattern of third quality
mimics your average modified meantone quite closely, and that it also
resembles the third distribution in Werckmeister's continuo
temperament. So when one begins to open one's mind to the larger
historical reality, V begins to seem much more "mainstream". Regarding
its suitabilitiy for "chromatic genera", the difference is small
between V and III. III actually has a larger number of Pythagorean
major thirds in the distant keys, albeit at a slight improvement in
the thirds in the home keys, but if I had to play in "chromatic"
tonalities I would prefer V.

Ciao,

🔗Tom Dent <stringph@...>

What on earth does 'fallacy' have to do with 'censorship', please?

Of course Werckmeister cared about circular temperament. No-one is
arguing with that. But who are these 'people like Werckmeister'?
Can you show us that there was anyone else 'like Werckmeister'? ...
That is the whole point. One person is not another.

It might help to pay attention to the logical structure of what I did
say: It remains nonsensical to reason from 'X was friends with Y' to
'X agreed with Y about some aspect of tuning or temperament'.

Take the list members. Is it really so impossible for two people to
remain friends while using completely different tuning systems?

Also, I have no idea where you got the notion that either Buxtehude or
Werckmeister thought one should 'use every key for improvisation
requirements'. Is this in any historical source? If a player is
improvising - ie not bound to any pre-ordained key or harmony - why
can't he just choose to avoid whatever 'bad' intervals exist on the
organ in front of him?

Are you saying then that it would be impossible for Buxtehude to
improvise on an organ tuned in meantone? That would be a bit of a
handicap!

If Buxtehude was such a fan of the 'complete circle' why is his
harpsichord music so extremely conservative in tonality? I'll leave
you to find out what proportion of his Suites are in one sharp or flat
or none at all...
~~~T~~~

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@... wrote:
>
> Tom, maybe you have the common fallacy? (Censorship, anyone?)
>
>
> With titles like "Musicalische Tempertur" why would anyone suspect
people
> like Werckmeister cared any about tuning and temperament?
>
> All sarcasm aside, Buxtehude's friendship with Werckmeister does
tell us
> that they were both of a notion of using every key on an organ for
improvisation
> requirements. They both knew that a complete circle was needed for
the
> keys, from their decidedly improviser points of perspective. That
could mean
> WIII or WV tuning, unless Buxtehude had his own special brew.
>
> Johnny

🔗Brad Lehman <bpl@...>

Tom Dent wrote (to Johnny):
> Are you saying then that it would be impossible for Buxtehude to
> improvise on an organ tuned in meantone? That would be a bit of a
> handicap!
>
> If Buxtehude was such a fan of the 'complete circle' why is his
> harpsichord music so extremely conservative in tonality? I'll leave
> you to find out what proportion of his Suites are in one sharp or
> flat or none at all...

Tom and Johnny, please be careful that you both aren't
over-generalizing about Buxtehude or about any of these other things.
(And, I'd certainly never accuse the two of you of over-generalizing
in the *same* direction about anything...)

I have gone through the complete extant harpsichord music of
Buxtehude; also that of Bohm, Purcell, and some others.

Do you really want to know what notes they call for in these
compositions? On the flat side, Georg Bohm calls for a healthy dose
of Gb, Db, and Ab; and on the sharp side he goes all the way up to D#
and A#. (Sure, on *some* occasions one might retune the harpsichord
to choose different accidentals, according to which piece is going to
be played; but some of the compositions go beyond 12 notes.)

And, since you brought up Buxtehude, here's a roster of all of his
extant harpsichord music and the notes these pieces require. I'm
going straight through Breitkopf 8077 from first page to last:

C suite 226: Bb to G#
C suite 227: Bb to G#
C suite 228: Bb to G#
C suite 230: Eb to G#
C suite 231: Bb to G#
D suite 232: C to G# +A#
d suite 233: Eb to G#
d suite 234: Eb to G#
e suite 235: F to A#
e suite 236: C to A#
e suite 237: F to A#
F suite 238: Eb to C#
F suite 239: Eb to C#
G suite 240: F to D#
g suite 241: Ab to C#
g suite 242: Ab to C#
A suite 243: G to B# (yes, B sharp! no surprise in A-major music)
a suite 244: F to D#
C aria/var 246: Bb to D#
C More Palatino 247: Bb to D#
d Rofilis 248: Eb to G#
G La Capricciosa 250: Eb to D# (yes, both D#/Eb in the same piece)
a Aria/var 249: Bb to D#
a Courante Simple 245: F to D#
d Courante (Anhang 6): Bb to C#
C suite 229 (Lebegue?): Bb to G#
G Simphonie (Anhang 8 - Lebegue?): F to G#

=====

As for Bohm, this time in his *organ* pieces (pedaliter music, and
lots of chorale settings and partitas): he occasionally calls for 14
different notes within the same composition. The C major Praeludium
uses all of Eb-Bb-F-C-G-D-A-E-B-F#-C#-G#-D#-A#.

Yes, sports fans, both D#/Eb and A#/Bb at different spots within the
same composition. On organ. Maybe he had split keys, or maybe he had
an irregular temperament with moderate positions for these. [And if
it was any tighter than regular 1/6 comma on the naturals, there would
have been one or more wide 5ths somewhere in there around the back;
it's impossible not to.]

Bohm's A minor Praeludium sticks to 12 notes, but it's Bb up to D#.

His four-stanza setting of "Auf meinen lieben Gott" (even though there
are "only" two flats in the signature) uses all of
Db-Ab-Eb-Bb-F-C-G-D-A-E-B-F#-C#. Whatever organs he and his students
were playing it on, it had to have a serviceable way to play Db, C#,
and Ab.

"Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ" goes from Ab up to G#, needing both.

"Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist" goes from F up to A#.

"Wer nur den lieben Gott" is in A minor (zero anything in the
signature) but it needs F up to D#. The occurrence of D# certainly
isn't rare in *anybody's* 17th century music in the "simple" key of A
minor; and any music in E minor usually needs both D# and A#.

Johann Pachelbel's book of 95 Magnificat-fugues, composed during his
last job (St Sebald, Nuremberg, 1695-1706), needs
Ab-Eb-Bb-F-C-G-D-A-E-B-F#-C#-G#-D#. Obviously, most of the flat-side
stuff comes up during the 7th tone pieces (two flats in signature),
and most of the sharp-side stuff during the 4th tone pieces (empty
signature, but E major finals). Now, what was on *that* organ? Split
keys on G#/Ab and D#/Eb, or an irregular temperament?

Some of Pachelbel's earlier organ music goes farther afield than this,
incidentally, in both directions flatward and sharpward. Much farther.

General remark: even if the signatures look very simple at the
beginning of a piece, with two or fewer sharps or flats, the really
important thing to do anyway is to play all the way through each
piece, and jot down which *notes* are required to play the piece. And
then, figure out a range of historically plausible tuning schemes
within which those notes are available.

Brad Lehman

🔗Aaron Krister Johnson <aaron@...>

🔗Afmmjr@...

Re: Bach's "anti-Rameau" attitude...

Hi Tom,

Tom: What on earth does 'fallacy' have to do with 'censorship', please?

Johnny: Pardon, it was in jest, jest intonation, if you will. I was joking
that I was calling you out on who was indeed caught in a common fallacy. I
will now turn serious.

Tom: Of course Werckmeister cared about circular temperament. No-one is
arguing with that. But who are these 'people like Werckmeister'?
Can you show us that there was anyone else 'like Werckmeister'? ...
That is the whole point. One person is not another.

Johnny: Yes, of course. Like Werckmeister, Buxtehude was more pronounced
as an improviser. Both composers wrote very little. To them, composing was
less a creative achievement than their ability to sway the audience through a
real time improvisation. Werckmeister and CPE Bach both wrote of the need
for a circular tuning in improvisation. It was not of their choice to
improvise in meantone because they would have to keep a conscious mental barrier to
prevent the awful disparity of the wolf.

There are many scholars that have written of the primacy of improvisation in
the life of Werckmeister (Lindley, for example), and in Buxtehude. The same
might be said today of the Grateful Dead and Charlie Parker.

As an improvisor, It is important to limit anything that is forcibly held in
consciousness during an improvisation, and buddies Buxtehude and
Werckmeister realized this. Bach, too. If you are interested in this perspective,
certainly no part of any "common" fallacy, I could find some quotations.

Tom: It might help to pay attention to the logical structure of what I did
say: It remains nonsensical to reason from 'X was friends with Y' to
'X agreed with Y about some aspect of tuning or temperament'.

Johnny: And yet, I just did. Instead of condescending, why not reconsider.
I just don't think you recognize the priorities of these two friends.
According to Snyder, as I recall, Buxtehude got his job in Lubeck mainly as an
improviser. There was little that we could call a great musical composition
until after he secured the Lubeck job.

Your equation doesn't ring true to me because X was friends with Y for
professional reasons, too. They supported the same big ideas in music. The
historic record provides ample evidence of a need, a desire, and a determination
to have a circular tuning on the organ for the primary reason of improvisation
before audiences. In the age before recordings, improv was the higher
performance level for these two organists.

Tom: Take the list members. Is it really so impossible for two people to
remain friends while using completely different tuning systems?

Johnny: Of course, not. And yet, you see from what I have written, that
they had a different shop talk as improvisers than modern musicologists fully
understand. Snyder is rather honest about being behind the 8 ball in
understanding the issues of tunings, prominently quoting Ibo Ortgies. Yes,
Werckmeister wrote of the requirement of a circle to improvisation that Buxtehude must
have agreed with because of its clarity of purpose. The circle was
necessary for them both, and for the Bachs, as well, for the same reasons.

Tom: Also, I have no idea where you got the notion that either Buxtehude or
Werckmeister thought one should 'use every key for improvisation
requirements'. Is this in any historical source?

Johnny: “Legitimate musicians get more from creating something on the
clavier ex tempore than by depending too much on the tablature” declared
Werckmeister (Archambault, “Essential Annotations and Rules Concerning the Proper
Realization of the Basso Continuo or Thorough-Bass” (Die nothwendigsten
Ammerckungen und Regeln, wie der Bassus continuus oder General-Bass wohl könne
tractiret warden, p. 259). This is the same book that includes Buxtehude's
praise to Werckmeister.

Tom: If a player is improvising - ie not bound to any pre-ordained key or
harmony - why
can't he just choose to avoid whatever 'bad' intervals exist on the
organ in front of him?

Johnny: I truly hope I have moved you towards understanding this. An
improviser is bound to a particular key as soon as it is established with the
first chord(s). Below is a swatch from my upcoming book, sans final edits.
(Sorry if their are code translation problems):

Michael R. Dodds points out that Werckmeister’s Harmonologia musica is a
necessary guide to recovering the lost art of Baroque improvisation, giving a
healthy number of examples. For example, Praeambulum in A Minor, BuxWV 158 “
exemplifies the technique of generating an entire improvisatory composition
from a single melodic idea—in this case a sequential subject of the sort
addressed by Werckmeister” (Dodds, p. 12), with supplementing details to follow.
Additionally, Buxtehude used Werckmeister’s improvisatory principles regarding
sequential subjects in BuxWV 137, 150, 194, and 203. The gist here is that
Buxtehude and Werckmeister were in broad agreement as to the nitty gritty of
improvising on the organ. They must have grand get togethers, likely sharing
an organ bench from time to time.
Dodds describes a fascinating connection between Andreas Werckmeister and
Dieterich Buxtehude, eight years Werckmeister’s senior, in the process of
keyboard improvisation
In many of his works in improvisatory genres, including his praembula and
chorale-based compositions, Buxtehude employs the very techniques described by
his friend Werckmeister. At issue is not any question of influence:
notwithstanding Werckmeister’s avowals of originality, it seems more likely it was
he, an innovative theorist but mediocre composer, who learned more from the
Lübeck master than vice versa. Indeed, by the time Werckmeister published
Harmonologia musica in 1702, the sexagenarian Buxtehude had already composed most
of his organ works. Rather, the striking parallels between Werckmeister’s
teachings and Buxtehude’s music merit attention because they constitute
mutually supporting evidence about contrapuntal improvisation in the Baroque era
(Dodds, pp. 2-3).
As a first rate improviser, Werckmeister signaled a change with the old
guard in more than simply tuning. Gioseffe Zarlino’s Renaissance rules wouldn’t
work for serious improvisers in Werckmeister’s estimation because they were
too “complicated and obscure that one cannot easily in a moment recall them.
Our rules, however, derive from the chords, when below and above a third is
always placed, and thus cannot fail” (Dodds, p. 15_[i]_ (#_edn1) ).
Werckmeister promoted the need to not think while improvising, so Zarlino’s time worn
methods needed to be dispensed with. Werckmeister wrote of using parallel
thirds in both hands that move sequentially in contrasting directions in order
to jumpstart an improvisation. This use of parallel thirds is commonly used
in Buxtehude’s music (e.g., BuxWV 184, 186, 187, 208, 209, 199, and 200).
Dodds’s conclusion: Werckmeister’s teachings thus illuminate the
improvisational basis of Buxtehude’s chorale preludes (Dodds, p. 16).

____________________________________

_[i]_ (#_ednref1) Dodds referenced Hamonologia musica paragraph 194.

Tom: Are you saying then that it would be impossible for Buxtehude to
improvise on an organ tuned in meantone? That would be a bit of a
handicap!

Johnny: Not impossible, so much as a handicap.

Tom: If Buxtehude was such a fan of the 'complete circle' why is his
harpsichord music so extremely conservative in tonality? I'll leave
you to find out what proportion of his Suites are in one sharp or flat
or none at all...
~~~T~~~

Johnny: Werckmeister and Buxtehude both used diatonic keys for their more
conservative "frozen" compositions. It was their improvisations, as with the
Bachs, that demanded a full circle of keys.

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🔗Afmmjr@...

🔗Aaron Krister Johnson <aaron@...>

🔗Ozan Yarman <ozanyarman@...>

This is a congregation of tunaniks (as Charles would put it) after all. The importance of the theory of music is much shunned elsewhere in the world, so that's why we are crammed in here.

Incidentally, I would like to groan about the lack of concern my fellow countryman display towards music theory, and instead, aggrandize performance, as if performance could be perfected without any music theory!

Oz.

On Jun 19, 2008, at 1:44 AM, Aaron Krister Johnson wrote:

>
> It's funny how many different little discussions are going on, and
> always have, on the lists. You have the baroque/early music heads
> (Johnny, Andreas, Brad, Tom Dent, etc.) arguing about squiggles, you
> have the math-physics types discussing metastable intervals, etc., you
> have the near-east and middle-eastern group (Ozan, Shaahin, etc.)
>
> I don't know what my point is, but isn't it funny?
>
> -A.
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@... wrote:
>>
>> Aaron: Wow...I can't believe this is still a discussion, having
> ducked out
>> of
>> it for months!
>>
>> Johnny: Bach lives! I'm sure things are just beginning....
>>
>> Aaron: Anyway--Johnny--I'm curious--you contend that
>> Buxtehude might have had his
>> own special 'brew' (tuning)...why not old JS then? :)
>>
>> -A.
>>
>> Johnny: Ah, one leaves that special "brew" idea only as a
> possibility. I
>> do not contend that either Bach or Buxtehdue had their own special
> brew.
>> Maybe you read it upside down. ;)
>>
>> -J.
>>
>>
>>
>> **************Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for
>> fuel-efficient used cars.
> (http://autos.aol.com/used?ncid=aolaut00050000000007)
>>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
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🔗Dave Keenan <d.keenan@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

🔗Brad Lehman <bpl@...>

Aaron wrote:
> > It's funny how many different little discussions are going on, and
> > always have, on the lists. You have the baroque/early music heads
> > (Johnny, Andreas, Brad, Tom Dent, etc.) arguing about squiggles,

My arguments aren't about "squiggles". I don't even like that word, and I don't use it. My arguments are principally about playing correctly-spelled (and therefore also correctly-functioning) notes within tonal music, in 17th and early 18th century systems arising from regular (i.e. meantone) layouts.

If a piece has A# in it, like in some of the Buxtehude suites I mentioned yesterday, those A#s had better sound decently like an A# according to the context of other prominent notes around it (F#, D#, E#, G#, C#, et al), and not like a Bb that is a comma or more out of tune from the expected A# spot!

Again, I'll bring in one of my 2005 papers
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/clavichord.html
and several newer videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnzGDx-JJ1o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6ikS0b0p9w
about this. Any good temperament for Bach's music, and the music of other composers that he studied, has to be able to handle enharmonic swaps gracefully.

I don't care that Werckmeister and Buxtehude were friends. Buxtehude's *music*, at least in those several E minor suites, tells me all by itself that Werckmeister III is not good for it. W-III's D#s and A#s are much too high for the contexts in which those notes are used. W-III's A# is also too high for Buxtehude's D major suite, BuxWV 232. If someone tries to press onto me the argument that Buxtehude used W-III anyway for these pieces (on what evidence beyond a boatload of wishful thinking?), I'd first have to be convinced that Buxtehude actually couldn't hear pitch very well, and therefore he somehow deferred his judgment in such matters. And that's absurd. Why should Buxtehude prefer, or be stuck with, *any* published theoretical scheme found in any book?

I'd be much more inclined to believe that Buxtehude simply nudged his D# and A# low enough until they sounded good, since they don't *need* to function as Eb and Bb (or connect up with F) in these particular pieces. Buxtehude's A-major suite (BuxWV 243) makes an even stronger case against W-III, since the passage with B# and E# in it just sounds preposterous (in my opinion) with as much as a full comma of error each in C#-E# and G#-B#, as W-III has.

And if W-III doesn't work for these relatively simple harpsichord pieces by Buxtehude, how can anyone expect it to work for the more complicated music of Bach, either? That's where *I'm* coming from on this. I've played all this music. I'll use the gentlemanly and understated word "unrefined" to describe how it sounds in W-III, on harpsichord. It's much worse than "unrefined".

Suppose that Buxtehude was giving some nice little evening performance of violin sonatas from his own Opus 1, published 1694. Sonata #3 is in A minor, and sonata #4 is in B-flat major. Where should he put his D#/Eb, his G#/Ab, and his A#/Bb to be able to play continuo successfully in these compositions? And, supposing that his violinist could actually hear, how similarly (or differently? why?) should the 5ths G-D, D-A, and A-E be tempered on Buxtehude's harpsichord? ("Gee, Friedrich, I'm really sorry, but because my buddy Werckmeister's book says the A-E has to be pure while the G-D-A are 1/4 comma narrow each, that's what we MUST do! You'll just have to adapt to it, dude.") These are practical questions about playing *music*.

Brad Lehman

🔗Afmmjr@...

Johnny: We are a virtual community. We are here to learn and to share.
Sometimes we come from incredible diversity, but we must continue to believe
that we each mean well.

In the nicest way I want to respond to Bradley Lehman's post below. I
really want to do good by this. Let's see how it goes...

Brad: If a piece has A# in it, like in some of the Buxtehude suites I
mentioned yesterday, those A#s had better sound decently like an A#
according to the context of other prominent notes around it (F#, D#, E#,
G#, C#, et al), and not like a Bb that is a comma or more out of tune
from the expected A# spot!

Johnny: For the record, all of Werckmeister's correct temperaments have
enharmonic identities. This includes Werckmeister's III, IV, V, and VI. W.
1692, too. We know that Werckmeister was dead against meantone. It was for a
previous era, from Werckmeister's point of view. This is a revolution in
thinking, and a great reason for Buxtehude and Werckmeister to become friends.
Bach, too, if a bit younger.

I believe Buxtehude shared with Werckmeister the distaste for meantone which
comes out of an improviser's mind set. My email to Tom outlined the case
for an organ improviser to need a full circle of keys to be virtuosic, to be
even, to be interesting (since there are greater differences between keys in
such tunings).

Brad: Again, I'll bring in one of my 2005 papers
.... Any good temperament for Bach's music, and the music of
other composers that he studied, has to be able to handle enharmonic
swaps gracefully.

Johnny: Here, I must wonder, did you see, let alone read my e-mail to Tom?
It was meant as much for you! There is a perspective of music that you have
completely left out of your imaginings. I would have thought you might have
at least mentioned it. Perhaps you have been considering it.

Brad:
I don't care that Werckmeister and Buxtehude were friends. Buxtehude's
*music*, at least in those several E minor suites, tells me all by
itself that Werckmeister III is not good for it. W-III's D#s and A#s
are much too high for the contexts in which those notes are used.
W-III's A# is also too high for Buxtehude's D major suite, BuxWV 232.
If someone tries to press onto me the argument that Buxtehude used W-III
anyway for these pieces (on what evidence beyond a boatload of wishful
thinking?), I'd first have to be convinced that Buxtehude actually
couldn't hear pitch very well, and therefore he somehow deferred his
judgment in such matters. And that's absurd. Why should Buxtehude
prefer, or be stuck with, *any* published theoretical scheme found in
any book?

Johnny: You and I have a major disconnect hear. It should be obvious by
now. I have no repugnant reaction to hearing either Buxtehude or Bach on an
organ or harpsichord in Werckmeister III tuning. I do not want to be
insulting. It's like one believe in a sentient being and another doesn't. One like
coconuts and another can't stand them. I LOVE Werckmeister III tuning for both
Bach and Buxtehude's organ music.

PLEASE, if you can stand listening ever again to your nemesis tuning, take a
listen to Armin Schoof's recordings on the St. Jakobi Church organ in Lubeck
in WIII. I have 3 CDs of Bach and Buxtehude. Listening to these pieces in
equal temperament is to feel robbed. These friends Bux&Werck had more in
common than you presently realize. Much of Werckmeister's books feature
techniques right out of the Buxtehude playbook (Dodd).

The bigger question is, are you a lobbyist for a cause? If so, there is no
reason to beat a dead horse (meaning the subject). If you simply have to
prove that you are right, it will be confusing for others. My life is filled
with musicians that love Werckmeister III tuning, and yet you revile it. Can
we move on?

Brad: And if W-III doesn't work for these relatively simple harpsichord
pieces
by Buxtehude, how can anyone expect it to work for the more complicated
music of Bach, either? That's where *I'm* coming from on this. I've
played all this music. I'll use the gentlemanly and understated word
"unrefined" to describe how it sounds in W-III, on harpsichord. It's
much worse than "unrefined".

Johnny: It works great for Bach. Somehow, it appears to me, your sense on
this was spoiled by some outside force (much as you have alluded). I know
lots of people who are spoiled on all sorts of things, myself included. And we
all know that one's hearing is one the most sensitive issues to a musician.
I want to simply say I love WIII tuning for Bach and Buxtehude. The shoe is
now on the other foot; why is that?

Brad: Suppose that Buxtehude was giving some nice little evening performance
of violin sonatas from his own Opus 1, published 1694. Sonata #3 is in
A minor, and sonata #4 is in B-flat major. Where should he put his
D#/Eb, his G#/Ab, and his A#/Bb to be able to play continuo successfully
in these compositions? And, supposing that his violinist could actually
hear, how similarly (or differently? why?) should the 5ths G-D, D-A, and
A-E be tempered on Buxtehude's harpsichord? ("Gee, Friedrich, I'm
really sorry, but because my buddy Werckmeister's book says the A-E has
to be pure while the G-D-A are 1/4 comma narrow each, that's what we
MUST do! You'll just have to adapt to it, dude.") These are practical
questions about playing *music*. Brad Lehman

Johnny: If you look through a meantone prism, you will only see and hear
meantone. Buxtehude supported Werckmeister's ideas, and there are plenty of
ideas to go around. We could pick and choose based on each idea. With all of
your writings, there are more readings and listenings still to be made.
There are more patterns to be discerned, many not previously covered by received
musicology. And there were different priorities, Horatio, than even you may
have imagined.

**************Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for
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🔗Brad Lehman <bpl@...>

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

> Johnny: For the record, all of Werckmeister's correct temperaments
have
> enharmonic identities. This includes Werckmeister's III, IV, V, and
VI. W.
> 1692, too. We know that Werckmeister was dead against meantone.
It was for a
> previous era, from Werckmeister's point of view. This is a
revolution in
> thinking, and a great reason for Buxtehude and Werckmeister to
become friends.
> Bach, too, if a bit younger.

1. Do you have any evidence whatsoever that Bach ever met
Werckmeister, or that they were ever friends?

2. Werckmeister's "III" temperament (the one he called his first
"correct" temp) doesn't solve meantone's problems. It leaves four of
the five worst and most obvious problems in place! It gets rid of the
wolf 5th, sure, but it doesn't get rid of the four wide diminished
4ths (typically F#-Bb, C#-F, G#-C, and B-Eb). All it does is trim
them down a little bit to become Pythagorean in size, *less*
annoyingly far out of tune...only a full syntonic comma too wide.

3. What "revolution in thinking" is this idea of modifying regular
meantone layouts so they sound better in more keys? You'd have to
prove that nobody before Werckmeister ever conceived of, or said
anything about, or ever *did* in practice, any spreading-around of
pure 5ths here and there to get rid of a wolf. Maybe John Bull
thought of it, or somebody else, generations before Werckmeister was
even born. How do you "know" that Werckmeister was making up anything
that was in any way new?

4. How do you suppose that Bach's uncle, the one he called "the
profound composer", was tuning in Eisenach when JSB was born there in
1685 (and before that)? That elder Bach's music is chromatically
adventurous, too, and doesn't really work in any sort of meantone.
Couldn't he have been using some circulating temperament(s) himself,
way before Werckmeister put anything into print? Again, where do you
get the idea that W's work was revolutionary? Are you just studying
*published documents*, or are you studying real music and the notes
used in it?

>
> I believe Buxtehude shared with Werckmeister the distaste for
meantone which
> comes out of an improviser's mind set. My email to Tom outlined the
case
> for an organ improviser to need a full circle of keys to be
virtuosic, to be
> even, to be interesting (since there are greater differences between
keys in
> such tunings).

Gee, Johnny, you don't need to sell the improvisation idea to *me*.
I've been improvising organ pieces in public for more than 20 years.
And I especially like to improvise harpsichord pieces during my tuning
lectures, where I show the dead-ends of meantone layouts, and where I
show the way circulating temperaments let us go everywhere.

>
>
> Brad: Again, I'll bring in one of my 2005 papers
> .... Any good temperament for Bach's music, and the music of
> other composers that he studied, has to be able to handle enharmonic
> swaps gracefully.
>
> Johnny: Here, I must wonder, did you see, let alone read my e-mail
to Tom?
> It was meant as much for you! There is a perspective of music that
you have
> completely left out of your imaginings. I would have thought you
might have
> at least mentioned it. Perhaps you have been considering it.

Since you have no idea what my "imaginings" are, as to my "perspective
of music" that you assert I somehow don't have in the right
direction...see above, as to the importance I believe improvisation
has. I also mentioned improvisation in my first 2005 article. Have
you read all of it?

And especially, have you read pages 213-217 in part 2 where I laid out
my measurements of W-III, showing why it's lumpy?

As always, all the parts of it (seven files for reading, plus some
recorded musical examples) are freely downloadable from here:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/outline.html

> Johnny: You and I have a major disconnect hear. It should be
obvious by
> now. I have no repugnant reaction to hearing either Buxtehude or
Bach on an
> organ or harpsichord in Werckmeister III tuning.

I know that *you* don't.

> I do not want to be insulting.

Nor do I. I do point out, though, that I have a lot more stake in
playing harpsichord than you do.

Well, carry on. My wife needs the computer back now. :)

Brad Lehman

🔗Afmmjr@...

Brad:
1. Do you have any evidence whatsoever that Bach ever met
Werckmeister, or that they were ever friends?

Johnny:
There are connections to be made between Werckmeister and Bach, although
they never met. Bach's cousin, Johann Walther, studied with Werckmeister, while
continuing correspondence afterwards until Werckmeister passed away.
Additionally, Werckmeister sent his cousin many different works, especially works
by Buxtehude. Werckmeister inherited the entire Praetorious collection, btw.
Werckmeister was practically a next door neighbor in terms of georgraphical
proximity. Werckmeister's ideas were the big, bright ideas of the time,
fully exploited by Bach at the age of 18 in Arnstadt when he adjudicated the new
organ in Arnstadt built by Wender, identified as in the Werckmeister camp by
Kuhnau (as opposed to the meantone Silbermann).

Brad:
2. Werckmeister'2. Werckmeister'<WBR>s "III" temperament (the on
"correct" temp) doesn't solve meantone's problems. It leaves four of
the five worst and most obvious problems in place! It gets rid of the
wolf 5th, sure, but it doesn't get rid of the four wide diminished
4ths (typically F#-Bb, C#-F, G#-C, and B-Eb). All it does is trim
them down a little bit to become Pythagorean in size, *less*
annoyingly far out of tune...only a full syntonic comma too wide.

Johnny:
This is your own well expressed and passionate point of view. It likely
influences many, internationally, who are swayed by such detailed passion.
Only...it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Surely, you must recognize that I
disagree with you. The larger fourths are delicious. It does so much for the music
of Bach. It lends character to the well-temperament that is Bach, making
musically craggy what is otherwise more stark. According to Werckmeister's,
meantone's problem number one is the howling wolf. There were other items, too
many accidentals, too many new notes requiring subsemitones, too
non-chromatic as a result, etc.

Brad:
3. What "revolution in thinking" is this idea of modifying regular
meantone layouts so they sound better in more keys? You'd have to
prove that nobody before Werckmeister ever conceived of, or said
anything about, or ever *did* in practice, any spreading-around of
pure 5ths here and there to get rid of a wolf. Maybe John Bull
thought of it, or somebody else, generations before Werckmeister was
even born. How do you "know" that Werckmeister was making up anything
that was in any way new?

Johnny: Actually, you would have to prove there was someone earlier, which
you have not. Even if someone had preceded Werckmeister, perhaps someone in
China, it doesn't have the clout of influence that makes the difference.
This same clout is right on top of the young and impressionable JS Bach. To my
knowledge, W. is the first to write of the circle of fifths which allowed for
the homogenization of the enharmonic identities into the same note.
Admittedly, Marin Mersenne wrote theoretically about equal temperament, even Zarlino
wrote about equal temperament for lutes, but Werckmeister is the man when it
came to a circular well temperament on the organ and other keyboards. BTW,
WIII is recommended for all keyboards, not just the organ, as some have
implied.

Brad:
4. How do you suppose that Bach's uncle, the one he called "the
profound composer", was tuning in Eisenach when JSB was born there in
1685 (and before that)? That elder Bach's music is chromatically
adventurous, too, and doesn't really work in any sort of meantone.
Couldn't he have been using some circulating temperament(Couldn't he h
way before Werckmeister put anything into print?

Johnny:
Yes, I believe Uncle JC Bach did use what came to be called WIII tuning, if
not one of the other variants. W. was very careful not to imply he invented
it. It was already in use. The big gun in the neighborhood of W. was uncle
JC. They probably met, JC and AW, if only because of their mutual interests,
accomplishments, and fame. Both was mugged by the system and complained
about it (e.g., wages being robbed, misunderstandings by those around them,
chromaticism, from a famous family of musicians).

Brad:
Again, where do you
get the idea that W's work was revolutionary? Are you just studying
*published documents*, or are you studying real music and the notes
used in it?

Johnny: I've written a book on the subject Bach and Tuning. Now that the
school season is winding up, I should be able to finish a version of the book
that can be distributed. Certainly, if I were to simply rehash what has
already been published there would be no purpose to volunteer to spend so many
hours over 3 decades. I learned to speak German for this. I wrote a master
thesis at columbia university on this. I visited and researched in Leipzig,
Muhlhausen, Eisenach, Kothen, Arnstadt, Erfurt, and Wolfenbuttal to this
effort. Perhaps you could say I am taking a more ethnomusicologically-influenced
study. The unequalness that makes up well temperament is part of the
Thuringian aesthetic of the period, as a visit to Werckmeister's Quedlinburg church
door demonstrates.

Brad:
Gee, Johnny, you don't need to sell the improvisation idea to *me*.
I've been improvising organ pieces in public for more than 20 years.
...
Johnny: Glad to hear of it. Too bad you didn't make it clear earlier. Do
you identify with the idea of needing a full circle palate for chromatic
improvisation?

Brad:
And especially, have you read pages 213-217 in part 2 where I laid out
my measurements of W-III, showing why it's lumpy?

Johnny: How academic. I sing Werckmeister III tuning, as I sing Harry
Partch Li Po Songs. What you call lumpy I find dramatic. Do you fully realize
that this List includes all manner of different tuning systems. In recent
years I have explored polymicrotonality. You could say I have the stretched ears
that George Ives hoped for his son Charles. I don't see how your writing
how something sounds bad trumps my hearing that same something sounding good.
Off hand, I don't recall anything that long (217 pages) that you wrote.
Probably you mean the second part of the Oxford publication. It's been some
time now. I'll take another look.

Brad: As always, all the parts of it (seven files for reading, plus some
recorded musical examples) are freely downloadable from here:
_http://www-personalhttp://www-http://www-phttp://www-p_
(http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/outline.html)

> Johnny: > I do not want to be insulting.

Brad:
Nor do I. I do point out, though, that I have a lot more stake in
playing harpsichord than you do.

Johnny: I don't think this is true. I produce concerts and CDs with
harpsichord all the time. I want the harpsichord to sound magnificent. To that end
I have been quite critical of certain instruments in certain combinations,
and blends. We have a new instrument now that really brought us into a new
dimension. WIII tuning with its 8 pure fifths give a great richness to the
instrument. Everything I produce has to have something very special about it.
Almost 30 years now.

Brad:
Well, carry on. My wife needs the computer back now. :)
Brad Lehman

Johnny:
Thank you for trying to see what I am doing.

: )

**************Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for
fuel-efficient used cars. (http://autos.aol.com/used?ncid=aolaut00050000000007)

🔗Brad Lehman <bpl@...>

🔗Tom Dent <stringph@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Brad Lehman" <bpl@...> wrote:

> Are you just studying
> *published documents*, or are you studying real music and the notes
> used in it?

How can anyone study 'real' 17th-century or 18th-century music? We
can't hear it! Not even the least little echo! It's gone for ever! (*)
This basic fact eludes many people depressingly often.

All that remains are relatively few manuscript or published scores.
These are also d o c u m e n t s that have to be interpreted - just
like any other - and maybe even more ambiguous and subjective than
many written texts.

(* Except for mechanical organs if they survive in good condition...)

What we can hear, right now, is - to be precise - 21st-century music
produced by taking an old printed or written score and applying a
whole slew of assumptions or personal choices about instruments,
tunings, and interpretations to it. The result *may* bear some
acoustic similarity to what was heard 300 years ago, but is likely to
be quite different in one or more respects.

No-one, least of all Brad, has explained how exactly this helps us
study music that people actually heard in the 17th or 18th century.
The closest he seems to get is saying "I played this piece the other
day in meantone (or whatever) and it sounded strange or 'sour' or
unpleasant" or conversely "it sounded strong or tasteful or graceful
or magnificent" etc. etc.

Now what could 'tasteful' possibly mean for a 17th-century listener or
player? (Did people even use the word?) And why should that be
anything like what Brad (at least since 2005) considers musically
tasteful or distasteful, played by himself on his own instruments - or
what anyone else today likes to hear, for that matter?

There is a missing link: we know what notes composers wrote, not what
pitches they wanted or expected them to sound at. If we are serious
about old music we should try to find some information about this
*without* automatically referring to our present-day assumptions or
conditioned preferences.

So what becomes of the argument: If some guy wrote an A# or Db, he
'must have' wanted an interval within certain limits that exclude a
meantone-tuned Bb or C#? No matter what the musical context? Can we
really determine when a composer wanted or expected to deviate from
meantone simply by noting down the notes and counting them up?

Isn't this like saying, if some guy wrote 16th-notes he can't possibly
have meant them to be performed as 32nd-notes - regardless of musical
context?

> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@ wrote:
>
> > case
> > for an organ improviser to need a full circle of keys to be
> virtuosic, to be
> > even, to be interesting (since there are greater differences between
> keys in
> > such tunings).

Actually, most of Froberger's and Frescobaldi's notated improvisatory
pieces - ie toccatas - do respect the usual bounds of meantone (G#-Eb,
or D#-Ab with the common split keys) and probably were played on
meantone organs. Does this mean that neither Froberger nor Frescobaldi
were 'virtuosic' or 'interesting' improvisers?
Aren't there much more essential aspects to improvisation than whether
or not one is able to modulate to some specific key, or is able to
play a chord with such and such an exact tuning which doesn't exist in
meantone?

Anyway, I reject the notion (which seems to come from the 20th and
21st century) that meantone need not be 'interesting' with respect to
modulation. If you look at those two composers you can see just how
surprising and expressive it can be purely within meantone. Eg -
juxtapose chords of C minor and A major, or Bb major vs F# minor in
meantone, then try WIII or anything more equal... Chromatic
alterations and progressions are if anything *more* interesting in
meantone.

And if you do go outside G#-Eb (resp. D#-Ab), it needn't always lead
to musical disaster, as Brad seems to be arguing with Buxtehude.

Frescobaldi and Froberger often wrote Db in exactly the contexts where
it can be a well-tuned harmonic 7th or 7/6 if tuned to meantone C#.
So does notated Db 'need' musically to be higher than meantone C#? At
least examine the musical context. We have another witness in Huygens
who wrote about E minor being more plaintive than D minor because of
its mistuned leading note. Why should we necessarily think that any
unexpectedly high or low note in the scale was a handicap, rather than
a feature or opportunity if used cleverly?

> improvise harpsichord pieces during my tuning
> lectures, where I show the dead-ends of meantone layouts, and where I
> show the way circulating temperaments let us go everywhere.

Makes you wonder - if it was such a 'dead end', how could meantone
possibly have been the standard keyboard tuning for so many hundreds
of years?

Well ... perhaps people preferred a finite number of purely-tuned
chords to the ability to play every possible chord on every possible
chromatic degree - but none of them very well-tuned. Perhaps they had
strongly different musical priorities from what either Brad or Johnny
seem to have.

Saying 'dead-end' and 'let us go everywhere' is already strongly
judgmental. Of course if you insist on trying to play a meantone
instrument in a way it's not designed for you'll get an aural mess.
Did musicians actually think like that? Did they insist on 'freedom'
at all costs? Did they consider it good practice to try and modulate
to Db major regardless of the audible consequences? Did they, in
short, behave like 19th-century pianists?

If I can rephrase the metaphor to reverse the bias: Meantone means
several beautiful boulevards and a few stinking dead-ends, and
everyone with a little intelligence knows how to keep out (or even how
to visit them, if you need a certain something from the black market).
Equal temperament means a featureless north-south grid of streets, all
of them equally dirty - perfect freedom of movement but no reason to
go anywhere. So much for 'freedom'. In Brad's and Johnny's conception
of circulating temperament you still have a grid and the streets are
still all dirty - just that some are more dirty than others and the
houses may be slightly different colours.

And that doesn't even account for the fact that the difference between
consonance and dissonance *in a single key* is much more pronounced in
meantone than in circulating temps. A skilled improviser in meantone
can create just as much tension and contrast by using dissonance,
scarcely modulating at all, as someone in a near-equal circular
temperament could by the most daring modulations.

Even Werckmeister said in 1698 that Praetorius' (meantone) tuning,
either Eb-G# or occasionally with a split Eb/D#, had been perfectly
good for his (P's) musical purposes...

Back to Buxtehude: I find the great majority of his harpsichord works
are perfectly well playable either with plain meantone, or altering
the pitch of exactly one note. If you want to play through without
retuning you can do an even greater majority almost perfectly just by
altering C#, G#, Eb and Bb. That's 8 notes out of 12 (F through F#)
still in meantone.
~~~T~~~

🔗Brad Lehman <bpl@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Dent" <stringph@...> wrote:
> How can anyone study 'real' 17th-century or 18th-century music? We
> can't hear it! Not even the least little echo! It's gone for ever!

I am pointing out real and practical problems in PERFORMING 17th
century music today, on normal 12-note harpsichords and organs, using
the repertoire that was SUPPOSEDLY conceived for meantone. You are
quite welcome to seek practical solutions to that, wherever and
however you want to.

Here are some more Buxtehude examples: starting with the B-flat major
fugue, BuxWV 176. A score is readily available on pages 157-159 of
the Dover edition of "organ works". The piece needs Db, Ab, Eb, Bb,
F, C, G, D, A, E, B, F#, and C#. What do you think of the approach of
Mortensen, on harpsichord, on the Naxos volume 1 CD? He uses regular
1/4 comma all the way, without a Db. The occurrences of Db stick out
rather violently. Mortensen exacerbates that, in one of the bars that
has Db, by improvising also an F-F# trill (pseudo-Gb) in another voice.

If you were putting together a performance of that YOURSELF, Tom, on
harpsichord: how exactly would you tune for it? And if somebody
happened to complain afterward that some of your accidentals sounded
really odd, how would you explain it?

And, while we're in that book of Buxtehude's collected "organ works",
how do you expect one should handle (or that Buxtehude *did* have on
an instrument...) the A major Praeludium, BuxWV 151, with its range of
C up to B#? The piece needs C, G, D, A, E, B, F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#,
and B#. No flats, no F, but that's 13 different notes anyway. Do you
think the E# was tuned high enough to sound like an E# in all its
musical contexts? Why or why not? How about the way a B# occurs in
the treble of bar 107, and a C natural in the tenor only two bars
later, in long notes, within a section marked "Adagio"?

What do you think is plausible for Buxtehude's E major Praeludium,
BuxWV 141, needing only twelve notes... but, they're D up to Fx?

How about the notorious F-sharp minor Praeludium, BuxWV 146, which
also needs only twelve notes...but, they're G up to Cx?

Brad Lehman

🔗Afmmjr@...

Posted by: "Tom Dent" _stringph@... _
(mailto:stringph@...?Subject=%20Re:anti-meantone%20polemic%20and%20'real%20music') _sphaerenklang _
(http://profiles.yahoo.com/sphaerenklang)
Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:10 am (PDT)
--- In _tuning@yahoogroups.com_ (mailto:tuning@yahoogroups.com) , "Brad
Lehman" <bpl@...> wrote:

> Are you just studying
> *published documents*, or are you studying real music and the notes
> used in it?

Tom: How can anyone study 'real' 17th-century or 18th-century music…
The result *may* bear some acoustic similarity to what was heard 300 years
ago, but is likely to
be quite different in one or more respects.

--Johnny: Aren’t you being a bit dire, if not dour? In comparison with
many other musics, German Baroque music offers much more than mere clues. If we
were speaking about ancient Greek music, I would agree with you. Modern
presentations of ancient Greek music are pure nonsense. Imagination aids
knowledge in search of truth.

Tom: There is a missing link: we know what notes composers wrote, not what
pitches they wanted or expected them to sound at. If we are serious
about old music we should try to find some information about this
*without* automatically referring to our present-day assumptions or
conditioned preferences.

--Johnny: From a musician’s point of view, it is not the notes or the
pitches, it is the intervals. We (counting myself a musician) get meaning from
intervals. Notes may be a short-hand for notation. Pitches are best for
timbral discussion, and for relative pitch height. But the true meaning of
intervals is convoluted by temperament. In today’s music, dissonance includes
noise, and it has been in ascendancy for decades. At some point, a Baroque
aesthetic developed that would allow for a positive acceptance, if not adoration,
for different sized tempered intervals. Without the insistence of an absolute
pitch standard, it was all about the intervals. We should be happy there
is examination of early music here, but it need not be reflex.

> --- In _tuning@yahoogroups.com_ (mailto:tuning@yahoogroups.com) , Afmmjr@
wrote:
>
> > case
> > for an organ improviser to need a full circle of keys to be
> virtuosic, to be
> > even, to be interesting (since there are greater differences between
> keys in
> > such tunings).

Tom: Actually, most of Froberger's and Frescobaldi's notated improvisatory
pieces - ie toccatas - do respect the usual bounds of meantone (G#-Eb,
or D#-Ab with the common split keys) and probably were played on
meantone organs. Does this mean that neither Froberger nor Frescobaldi
were 'virtuosic' or 'interesting' improvisers?
--Johnny: Surely, you recognize a difference in diatonic improvisation and
chromatic improvisation? Are you saying they were split key organs for the
two Fs? I would have thought that unlikely at best. Besides, even with your
loyalty to meantone, Tom, without honking on wolves, meantone keys are
practically identical, at least as compared with the variegated well temperament.
I could improvise with only 3 notes, better, 3 intervals. It is the
musicianship that is the predominant energy that promulgates the music. On my
bassoon, I can move anywhere at anytime, without barriers. I would think it awful
for a keyboard virtuoso to be limited by dead ends.
Tom: Aren't there much more essential aspects to improvisation than whether
or not one is able to modulate to some specific key, or is able to
play a chord with such and such an exact tuning which doesn't exist in
meantone?

--Johnny: Geiringer described C.P.E. Bach as seeming possessed when
improvising on his Silbermann clavichord
“Various contemporaries have given us enthusiastic reports on these
improvisations, and they all leave in our mind the picture of a person possessed. ‘
In his free phantasies he was quite unique and inexhaustible. For hours he
would lose himself in his ideas and in an ocean of modulations. His soul
seemed to be far removed, the eyes swam as though in some ravishing dream, the
lower lip drooped over his chin, his face and form bowed almost inanimately over
the instrument (Geiringer, The Bach Family, p. 348).” Cromaticism likely
lead the way to well temperament. The 2 Fs likely played on organs in all
sorts of temperaments. The general rule of irregular tunings is missed by most
modern computations of the past. As you say, Tom, just because something
happened in the past, it doesn’t mean that it is perceived by the present.
Tom: Makes you wonder - if it was such a 'dead end', how could meantone
possibly have been the standard keyboard tuning for so many hundreds
of years?

--Johnny: Because meantone was a standard tuning for composed works. It was
not the preference for improvisers. Hence, Buxtehude, Werckmeister, and
Bach. It is silly to consider meantone for organs that demonstration a
notation for well temperament, that is with enharmonic identities. The harpsichord
deal is then a murkier area for focus. My argument is that Buxtehude was
80% improviser, 20% composer.

Tom: And that doesn't even account for the fact that the difference between
consonance and dissonance *in a single key* is much more pronounced in
meantone than in circulating temps.
--Johnny: This is true. That’s why a solo melody floats so well over a
meantone tuned keyboard. In any event, a modulation to a Db major chord, as
related to some other chord in any particular key, possibly a dominant of a
dominant, requires for an improviser no stop signs. This is true even for the
intellectually gifted. Keep in mind, Tom, the 2 Fs that you know are from
notation only.
Tom: Even Werckmeister said in 1698 that Praetorius' (meantone) tuning,
either Eb-G# or occasionally with a split Eb/D#, had been perfectly
good for his (P's) musical purposes...

--Johnny: This means nothing. Werckmeister recognized Praetorius was a
fount of meantone, but that music had changed. Music had different needs.
Ta-dah! Improvisation required chromaticism through all twelve, count them, 12,
keys. (Meantone is not know for 12 keys.)

Tom: Back to Buxtehude: I find the great majority of his harpsichord works
are perfectly well playable either with plain meantone, or altering
the pitch of exactly one note. If you want to play through without
retuning you can do an even greater majority almost perfectly just by
altering C#, G#, Eb and Bb. That's 8 notes out of 12 (F through F#)
still in meantone.
~~~T~~~--Johnny: Yes, Buxtehude’s harpsichord pieces are rather
unremarkable in themselves, at least what has survived to the present. Even
Werckmeister III tuning treatment offers little to them. Nonetheless, the organ works
are tremendously effective in Werckmeister III tuning, based on the amazing
Armin Shoof recordings. Surely, you have heard them? Anyway, here’s to the
struggle! Johnny

**************Gas prices getting you down? Search AOL Autos for
fuel-efficient used cars. (http://autos.aol.com/used?ncid=aolaut00050000000007)

🔗Andreas Sparschuh <a_sparschuh@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Poletti" <paul@...> wrote/asked:

> Andreas, my dear fellow, I am most interested in knowing what truly
> exceptional super-human auditory capability you posses which allows
> you, upon hearing them, to tell a 704 cent fifth from a 700 cent
> fifth. They both beat extremely slowly by exactly the same amount.
> Have you got some sort of advanced technology in your ears, perhaps a
> harmonic Babelfish or some such?
>
Dear Paul,

nothing of all that presupmtions,
except of tuning for example on my own acoustic-piano
-as precisely as i can do that-
in the following circle of tempered 5ths:

A2 = 221 A442Hz, that's 120Metronome-Beats/min sharper above 440Hz
E4 = E331 e662 (<663 := 3*A2)
B0 = 31 62 124 248 B496 b992 (<993:=3*E4)
rem:
B0=31Hz is the lowest pitch on 5string doublebass
or the second whithe key on a modern piano, without inharmonicity
F#2 = 93 := 3*B0
C#4 = C#279 := 3*F#2
G#5 = 837 := 3*C#4
Eb3 = 158 Eb314 eb628 1256 2512 (>2151 := 3*G#5) ~+0.7Cents wide 5th
Bb4 = B471 := 3*Eb3
F4 = F353 f706 1412 (<1413 := 3*Bb4)
C5 = (33 66 132 264 528 <) 529 1058 (<1059 := 3*F4)
G2 = 99 := 3*33
D2 = 37 74 148 D296 (<297 := 3*G2)
A3 = 221 (<222 111 := 3*D2)

that's in acending order over the usual 2 tuning octaves in
http://www.xs4all.nl/~huygensf/scala/scl_format.html

!Sparschuh442wideFrench5th.scl
!
! relative deviations in the circle of 5ths, beginning from:
! 442Hz=A 662:663 E 992:993 B F# C# G#
inbetween the "french"5th G#-Eb 2512:2511 =~0.7Cents widend sharper
! Eb Bb 1412:1413 F 1058:1059 C 528:529 G 296:297 D 221:222 A=442Hz
! and with all other 5ths JI-pure or narrow flattend.
12
!
! that yields the concrete absolute pitches on the keys, starting from
! 264.5Hz C4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_C
! 279 C#
! 314 Eb
! 331 E
! 353 F
! 372 F#
! 396 G
! 416.5 G#
! 442 A that's exactly 2Hz above: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A440
! 471 Bb
! 496 B
! 523Hz c5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenor_C
558/523 ! c#
592/523 ! d
628/523 ! eb
662/523 ! e (5:4)*(2652:2645) ~4.6 Cents sharper above 5/4 JI 3rd
706/523 ! f (4:3)*(1059:1058) ~1.6 Cents sharper above 4/3 JI 4th
744/523 ! f#
792/523 ! g (3:2)*(528:529) ~3.3Cents flattend up than 3/2 JI 5th
884/523 ! a
942/523 ! bb
992/523 ! b
2/1 ! 1058Hz c6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soprano_C
!
!

After a while in retuning and playing in that again and again:
Sooner or later,
most professional tuners become aware about the
different quality of the wide-"french"5th against
all others narrow-well ones.

Question:
How does that sound on yours piano?

Next step:
Once if you have mastered the above one and:
if you do also prefer A4=416Hz
-the modern pseudo-historically "Cammer-thone"-
then you should try out:
http://www.wegscheider-orgel.de/html/artikel.php?filename=artikel.php&tabname=Artikel&sz=22&Unterpunkt=H.C.%A0Snerha%A0und%A0die%A0Bachstimmung
with an even even about 3 times
smaller wide 5th inbetween G#-Eb
of the merely tiny deviation:

702,2276...Cent -701,9550...Cent = ~+0,2726..Cents wider than 3/2 JI.

that's even
about less than 7-times smaller
against Brad's alleged PC^(1/12) of ~+2Cents

Jsut try it out!
A.S.

🔗Brad Lehman <bpl@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Afmmjr@... wrote:
> Johnny: Yes, Buxtehudeâs harpsichord pieces are rather
> unremarkable in themselves, at least what has survived to the
> present.

Well, certainly I disagree with that as I play all of them: they are
finely-crafted and interesting pieces, comfortable under the fingers,
and they're core repertoire in that style (along with music by
Froberger, Reincken, Bohm, Kuhnau, Pachelbel, et al). I have at least
six or seven all-Buxtehude harpsichord CDs that I listen to with
plenty of enjoyment; too bad you don't think more highly of this
music. "La Capricciosa" stands out especially as a winner, and it was
probably a direct inspiration for Bach's Goldberg Variations.

> Even Werckmeister III tuning treatment offers little to
> them.

That's defeatist! Had a chance to go through my videos about that, yet?

> Nonetheless, the organ works are tremendously effective in
> Werckmeister III tuning, based on the amazing Armin Shoof
> recordings. Surely, you have heard them? Anyway, hereâs to the
> struggle!

On your recommendation a couple of days ago (thanks!) I ordered a copy
of the Schoof/Buxtehude disc:
http://www.allegro.co.uk/dietrich-buxtehude-orgelwerke-p-3355.html?zenid=de2b30ac1d2d9ce0767d121f8c5cd6d8

I expect it won't arrive for a couple of weeks yet. Help me out in
understanding what to expect when it does. Which pieces did Schoof
record on the small organ in W-III, and which are in Werckmeister's
preferred temperament (equal!) on the big organ? Details of both
instruments:
http://www.st-jakobi-luebeck.de/dieorgeln.html

The short samples on *that* page don't tell us much, either, since the
Bach piece recorded in W-III is in C major with hardly any accidentals
(at least in the sampled section). For the big G minor fantasia/fugue
BWV 542, Schoof used the equal-tempered Schuke.

Brad Lehman

🔗Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@...>

On the performance of 17th-18th century music couldn't we say what Feldman said about a rehearsal of his piece.....
'It 's too damn fast and it too damn loud!'

/^_,',',',_ //^ /Kraig Grady_ ^_,',',',_
Mesotonal Music from:
_'''''''_ ^North/Western Hemisphere: North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island <http://anaphoria.com/>

_'''''''_ ^South/Eastern Hemisphere:
Austronesian Outpost of Anaphoria <http://anaphoriasouth.blogspot.com/>

',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',',

Afmmjr@... wrote:
>
>
> Posted by: "Tom Dent" stringph@...
> <mailto:stringph@...?Subject=%20Re%3Aanti-meantone%20polemic%20and%20%27real%20music%27> > sphaerenklang <http://profiles.yahoo.com/sphaerenklang>
>
>
> Mon Jun 23, 2008 11:10 am (PDT)
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com <mailto:tuning%40yahoogroups.com>, "Brad > Lehman" <bpl@...> wrote:
>
> > Are you just studying
> > *published documents*, or are you studying real music and the notes
> > used in it?
>
> Tom: How can anyone study 'real' 17th-century or 18th-century music…
> The result *may* bear some acoustic similarity to what was heard 300 > years ago, but is likely to
> be quite different in one or more respects.
>
> --Johnny: Aren’t you being a bit dire, if not dour? In comparison > with many other musics, German Baroque music offers much more than > mere clues. If we were speaking about ancient Greek music, I would > agree with you. Modern presentations of ancient Greek music are pure > nonsense. Imagination aids knowledge in search of truth.
>
>
> Tom: There is a missing link: we know what notes composers wrote, not > what
> pitches they wanted or expected them to sound at. If we are serious
> about old music we should try to find some information about this
> *without* automatically referring to our present-day assumptions or
> conditioned preferences.
>
> --Johnny: From a musician’s point of view, it is not the notes or the > pitches, it is the intervals. We (counting myself a musician) get > meaning from intervals. Notes may be a short-hand for notation. > Pitches are best for timbral discussion, and for relative pitch > height. But the true meaning of intervals is convoluted by > temperament. In today’s music, dissonance includes noise, and it has > been in ascendancy for decades. At some point, a Baroque aesthetic > developed that would allow for a positive acceptance, if not > adoration, for different sized tempered intervals. Without the > insistence of an absolute pitch standard, it was all about the > intervals. We should be happy there is examination of early music > here, but it need not be reflex.
>
>
> > --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com <mailto:tuning%40yahoogroups.com>, > Afmmjr@ wrote:
> >
> > > case
> > > for an organ improviser to need a full circle of keys to be
> > virtuosic, to be
> > > even, to be interesting (since there are greater differences between
> > keys in
> > > such tunings).
>
> Tom: Actually, most of Froberger's and Frescobaldi's notated > improvisatory
> pieces - ie toccatas - do respect the usual bounds of meantone (G#-Eb,
> or D#-Ab with the common split keys) and probably were played on
> meantone organs. Does this mean that neither Froberger nor Frescobaldi
> were 'virtuosic' or 'interesting' improvisers?
>
> --Johnny: Surely, you recognize a difference in diatonic > improvisation and chromatic improvisation? Are you saying they were > split key organs for the two Fs? I would have thought that unlikely > at best. Besides, even with your loyalty to meantone, Tom, without > honking on wolves, meantone keys are practically identical, at least > as compared with the variegated well temperament. I could improvise > with only 3 notes, better, 3 intervals. It is the musicianship that > is the predominant energy that promulgates the music. On my bassoon, > I can move anywhere at anytime, without barriers. I would think it > awful for a keyboard virtuoso to be limited by dead ends.
>
> >
> Tom: Aren't there much more essential aspects to improvisation than > whether
> or not one is able to modulate to some specific key, or is able to
> play a chord with such and such an exact tuning which doesn't exist in
> meantone? >
> --Johnny:*/ /*Geiringer described C.P.E. Bach as seeming possessed > when improvising on his Silbermann clavichord
>
> >
> “Various contemporaries have given us enthusiastic reports on these > improvisations, and they all leave in our mind the picture of a person > possessed. ‘In his free phantasies he was quite unique and > inexhaustible. For hours he would lose himself in his ideas and in an > ocean of modulations. His soul seemed to be far removed, the eyes > swam as though in some ravishing dream, the lower lip drooped over his > chin, his face and form bowed almost inanimately over the instrument > (Geiringer, The Bach Family, p. 348).” Cromaticism likely lead the > way to well temperament. The 2 Fs likely played on organs in all > sorts of temperaments. The general rule of irregular tunings is > missed by most modern computations of the past. As you say, Tom, just > because something happened in the past, it doesn’t mean that it is > perceived by the present.
>
> * *
>
> Tom: Makes you wonder - if it was such a 'dead end', how could meantone
> possibly have been the standard keyboard tuning for so many hundreds
> of years?
>
> --Johnny: Because meantone was a standard tuning for composed works. > It was not the preference for improvisers. Hence, Buxtehude, > Werckmeister, and Bach. It is silly to consider meantone for organs > that demonstration a notation for well temperament, that is with > enharmonic identities. The harpsichord deal is then a murkier area > for focus. My argument is that Buxtehude was 80% improviser, 20% > composer.
>
>
> Tom: And that doesn't even account for the fact that the difference > between
> consonance and dissonance *in a single key* is much more pronounced in
> meantone than in circulating temps.
>
> --Johnny: This is true. That’s why a solo melody floats so well over > a meantone tuned keyboard. In any event, a modulation to a Db major > chord, as related to some other chord in any particular key, possibly > a dominant of a dominant, requires for an improviser no stop signs. > This is true even for the intellectually gifted. Keep in mind, Tom, > the 2 Fs that you know are from notation only. >
> Tom: Even Werckmeister said in 1698 that Praetorius' (meantone) tuning,
> either Eb-G# or occasionally with a split Eb/D#, had been perfectly
> good for his (P's) musical purposes...
>
> --Johnny: This means nothing. Werckmeister recognized Praetorius was > a fount of meantone, but that music had changed. Music had different > needs. Ta-dah! Improvisation required chromaticism through all > twelve, count them, 12, keys. (Meantone is not know for 12 keys.)
>
>
> Tom: Back to Buxtehude: I find the great majority of his harpsichord > works
> are perfectly well playable either with plain meantone, or altering
> the pitch of exactly one note. If you want to play through without
> retuning you can do an even greater majority almost perfectly just by
> altering C#, G#, Eb and Bb. That's 8 notes out of 12 (F through F#)
> still in meantone.
> ~~~T~~~
>
> --Johnny: Yes, Buxtehude’s harpsichord pieces are rather unremarkable > in themselves, at least what has survived to the present. Even > Werckmeister III tuning treatment offers little to them. Nonetheless, > the organ works are tremendously effective in Werckmeister III tuning, > based on the amazing Armin Shoof recordings. Surely, you have heard > them? Anyway, here’s to the struggle! Johnny
>
>
>
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