12t-ET & historical wind instruments

Recently I had a brief email discussion about tunings for historical
instruments for "early" (i.e., Western medieval and Renaissance) music.
The correspondent was Antique Sound Workshop director, David H. Green.
His specialty is voicing and tuning expensive recorders. Initially, I
wrote him to ask what historical tuning or tunings his recorders are
available in, or whether the customer could specify to some extent. He
replied that he ships all recorders tuned (nominally) to 12t-ET. When I
asked what issues lay behind voicing and tuning of historical wind
instruments, he gave four points, some of which seem somewhat
compelling. However, he declined to continue the discussion past that
point due to his busy schedule.

I'd be interested in getting some responses to his comments, and in any
information about how wind instruments, and especially block flute or
fipple-blown types, were tuned in late medieval to early Renaissance
times. Please remember that I do not represent the following point of
view, I'm merely passing on the words of someone who is responsible for
tuning a significant percentage of the wind instruments currently in use
by "early music" ensembles. I find points 1 and 4 to be the most
interesting and compelling, though not totally convincing. That said,
here are Mr. Green's reasons for using 12t-ET on historical wind
instruments. I should warn you to be ready to breathe deeply and count
to 10 after reading point 3 ;-)

[BEGIN QUOTE]
1. Wind and string instruments are played out of tune, both
intentionally and unintentionally, by both amateur and accomplished
professional musicians over a far wider degree of latitude, measured
quantitatively, than that encompassed by any known historical or modern
temperaments. Playing in tune, therefore, is a far bigger issue and far
more important and critical than playing in any specific temperament per

se. The differences in temperaments, although real and palpable when
heard in isolation and out of context, are in fact rather small and
minor when compared to what actually transpires in musical performance.

2. As I trust you already appreciate, there is no one perfect
temperament, either universally or in relation to a specific historical
period and body of music. All temperaments have their problems and their

"dirty little secrets." These problems cannot be avoided, so the options

are simply a matter of putting the problems where they do the least
amount of audible damage. To maintain that any one temperament is
superior or inferior to another is purely nonsensical.

3. I learned some 25 years ago that keyboard instruments (organs
or
harpsichords) do not have any more "resonance" when tuned in an
historical temperament than in ET; all writings that maintain this is
true are utter nonsense. The only factor that seems to have any real as
opposed to theoretical impact on resonance is that the octaves on the
instrument be exactly in tune with each other. One again, in the real
world, being in tune is far more important than being in a specific
temperament.

4. If you take the most extreme "sharp" temperaments (wide major

thirds, sixths, and sevenths in relation to ET), such as Pythagorean,
and the most extreme "flat" temperaments (narrow major thirds, sixths,
and sevenths in relation to ET), such as quarter-comma mean tone, and
average them together (add them up and divide by two, as it were) you
will come out with a temperament which is rather close to equal
temperament. In other words, all issues of historicity, convenience, and

tonal democracy aside for the moment, ET is a middle of the ballpark
temperament, one which in fact has considerable merit both theoretically

and practically. Its additional advantage of equally distributing tuning

problems was, I suspect, historically just a byproduct. ET seems to have

evolved de facto and its mathematical calculation and theoretical basis
were simply justification after the fact.

This has a number of interesting ramifications: if one tunes a
wind
instrument to equal temperament, its various notes are most easily blown

up or down to meet the tuning of a keyboard instrument set in an
historical temperament or a vocal or instrumental ensemble using a de
facto just intonation or so-called "romantic" or tendential intonation;
i.e., it is a very useful point of departure for making real as opposed
to theoretical music.
[END QUOTE]

Lock and load.

--
David J. Finnamore
Nashville, TN, USA
http://members.xoom.com/dfinn.1
--

On Sun, 26 Mar 2000, David J. Finnamore wrote:

> From: "David J. Finnamore" <dfin@freewwweb.com>
>
> Recently I had a brief email discussion about tunings for historical
> instruments for "early" (i.e., Western medieval and Renaissance) music.
> The correspondent was Antique Sound Workshop director, David H. Green.

> [BEGIN QUOTE]
> 1. Wind and string instruments are played out of tune, both
> intentionally and unintentionally, by both amateur and accomplished
> professional musicians over a far wider degree of latitude, measured
> quantitatively, than that encompassed by any known historical or modern
> temperaments.

It is even easier to sing out of tune than to play a recorder or cornett
out of tune. Anybody want to talk trombone (sackbutt)? This is a bit of a
red herring.

> 3. I learned some 25 years ago that keyboard instruments (organs
> or
> harpsichords) do not have any more "resonance" when tuned in an
> historical temperament than in ET

I think David is wrong here. A good Italian harpsichord designed for
meantone just slides into it so comfortably, the way a good steinway
slides into ET. But I have no facts and figures to prove it, just
experience as a tuner.

The only factor that seems to have any real as
> opposed to theoretical impact on resonance is that the octaves on the
> instrument be exactly in tune with each other.

This is nonsense. Octaves on the ends of even a 5-octave harpsichord are
not EXACTLY in tune, they are stretched a bit; the stretch on a piano is
much greater.

> 4. If you take the most extreme "sharp" temperaments (wide major
>
> thirds, sixths, and sevenths in relation to ET), such as Pythagorean,
> and the most extreme "flat" temperaments (narrow major thirds, sixths,
> and sevenths in relation to ET), such as quarter-comma mean tone, and
> average them together (add them up and divide by two, as it were) you
> will come out with a temperament which is rather close to equal
> temperament.

Maybe. Why you would want to do that is beyond me. Maybe it explains
Yamaha plastic recorders being in ET, but the expensive recorders are
designed with many parameters being different for the different historical
periods. Medieval, Renaissance, transitional, baroque, bore shape and
voicein gstandards are quite different.There would be no reason to make a
baroque recorder that played in Pythagorean, for instance.

I bought a couple of the recorders that I play with my amateur consort
from David Green. They work well, and for that group hoping for something
better than ET is not realistic. But the really professional recorders I
own were not built to play in ET, if you want equally tempered thirds in
some keys on say my g-ganassi, you have to over-blow or refinger. The
effort requires to lip up the mean-tone thirds on a cornett to ET heights
is even more substantial.

The fact that original instruments from the early baroque, when played,
tend to give much lower leading tones than ET, is an important part of the
sound the composers had in mind. In my humble opinion.

Judy (founder-director, the Delight Consort, the Fall River Fipple
Fluters; player of recorders cornett and sackbutt)

Every point Judith Conrad makes is excellent, and I'd like to second each
one based on my personal experience.

[David J. Finnamore, TD 584.2]
>...
>He replied that he ships all recorders tuned (nominally) to 12t-ET.
>When I asked what issues lay behind voicing and tuning of historical
>wind instruments, he gave four points, some of which seem somewhat
>compelling.
>...
>I'd be interested in getting some responses to his comments, and in any
>information about how wind instruments, and especially block flute or
>fipple-blown types, were tuned in late medieval to early Renaissance
>times.
>...

As an amateur wind instrument maker, one of the first things I'd have
pointed out is that it's basically impossible to make a keyless wind
instrument that plays all the notes over its full range in a consistent
tuning without requiring the player to make significant changes in
embouchure, air pressure/speed, fingerings, etc. to "coax" the notes
into tune. A wind instrument maker strives to makes the notes play as
consistently as possible over the different registers, but I believe
that all keyless wind instruments have what are essentially "compromise"
tunings. Thus, they're never truly 12t-ET [hence the "nominally"],
Pythagorean, Meantone, or whatever, anyway. :-)

I'm sorry if I've muddled this. If anyone wants to know more about
this, let me know and I'll send you some references. (My books are at
home, and I'm [physically, at least] at work right now.)

Cheers,
Christopher

Please permit me a short story? While visiting a 76-year old gentleman
recently, I made him a cup of freshly ground Columbian coffee. He liked the
taste, but remarked that it wasn't any different form the Maxwell House that
he has always used. Though I drank Maxwell House early on, I have never
returned after I realized I could taste fantastic coffee worthy of J.S.
Bach's "Coffee Cantata."

In the same way that I can "taste" the difference and he could not, I can
hear the distinctiveness of different tunings while many moderns do not, can
not, or will not.
The great majority simply have not.

Harpsichords will never be heard as more resonant if the instrument's timbre
mitigates against it. In my experience, harpsichordists always revel in the
myriad of colors possible through Werckmeister's chromatic tuning (III), or
the purity of just intervals in quarter-comma meantone, or the idiosyncracies
of the other tuning arrays.

As for recorders, I use adhesive tape to adjust any instrument from 12TET to
any temperament, even Yamaha plastics (for others, of course). It is the
very historical usage that eases the instruments into tunings across the
gamut. And of course, there are a myriad of different fingerings on a
recorder, beyond the conventional. Actually, even in 12TET there are subtly
different fingerings from one instrument to another (particularly the open G
on the alto).

On my instruments (von Huene Standby Junior at A=440, and a Dolmetch
original), there are no notes that cannot be reliably achieved, just as with
the bassoon (Puchner model).

The big issue for recorder makers is that one can close up holes, but they
cannot enlarge them easily. Hence, making meantone recorders ghettoizes them
from the 12TET context, and economically less viable. Historic period
recorders, which adjusted tuning with bees wax, had their tone holes
increased in order to play hegemonic 12TET. Analyses of tone holes on the
instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's instrument collection
demonstrated how the instruments had their tone hones increased.

Johnny Reinhard
AFMM