Well, just when I thought I'd gotten some kind of a handle on this I received an email from Charlie Cumella (Serkin's manager? He didn't identify himself.) with 4 pages of info from Tim Farley, apparently from the 2001 PTG convention in Reno. There are two sets of figures. The first he says can be entered into an Accutuner III. The second set are derived from a tuning on a 6'2" Steinway A and are different, he says, due to inharmonicity. He recommends the second set for tuning a Steinway. He also says that these offsets apply to the 5th octave. He's talking Accutuner language and I'm unilingual pRCT so I don't know if this is relevant. Would the numbers for an Accutuner be different from the numbers for pRCT? Here are his two sets of #s Set 1 F: 4.5 F#: -3.4 G: 2.2 G#: -5.6 A: 0.0 A#: 5.6 B: -2.2 C: 3.3 C#: -4.5 D: 1.1 D#: 6.7 E: -1.1 F: 4.5 Set 2 (From a Steinway A 6'2"- note the different numbers for the first and last F) F: 2.6 F# -4.6 G: 1.3 G#: -6.3 A: 0.0 A#: 4.9 B: -2.8 C: 1.6 C#: -5.6 D: 0.0 D#: 3.5 E: -2.8 F: 3.9 I note that the first set of figures are virtually the same as the figures I got from David Miller BEFORE the +(-0.61) offset. I'm guessing that one enters the first set into pRCT and some variation of the second set is what you'd get after the program calculates the tuning. Oh yeah, and I got an email from my contact at the Springfield Symphony telling me that there is an ongoing debate about which to go with the tuning and to be prepared for either the 1/7 meantone or ET. My guess is that the orchestra he's playing with may be uncomfortable with a meantone temperament. I go there tomorrow. I'm attaching the relevant page that was sent to me. Aaron At 09:24 PM 2/25/2009, you wrote: >FWIW, here is an excerpt from program notes, written by Peter Serkin >(11/1/2006): > >The piano heard on tonight’s program >has been tuned to an old mean-tone tem- >perament known as “one-seventh syntonic >comma,” devised by Jean-Baptiste Romieu in >the 18th century. Designed to accommodate >most keys, this temperament simultaneously >retains vivid key colors. Romieu’s solution is >one of many temperaments that evolved over >the course of several centuries. It is a tuning >somewhere between the earlier ones—such as >“one-quarter comma,” which achieves a great >harmoniousness and purity in keys that ap- >pear in the upper half of the circle of fifths (in >other words, those that have three or fewer >sharps or flats) but cannot be convincingly >used with keys in the lower half of the circle >(with four or more sharps or flats)—and 19th- >century quasiequal temperament tunings, >which negotiate all keys while still radiating >variegated key coloration. >Since the late 1800s, the traditional >mean-tone approach has been generally >abandoned in favor of standard equal tem- >perament. The establishment of this or- >thodoxy—that is, dividing an octave into >12 equidistant half-steps—resulted in the >loss of varied key colors, colors that, in the >older temperaments, are highlighted and >meaningful because of the irregularities of >their unequal distribution of semitones. In >equal temperament, the sameness of the >tunings of intervals has a neutralizing re- >sult: it renders keys indistinguishable from >one another, thus offering a vocabulary of >two basic keys, one major and one minor, >regardless of their transpositions. >With historical tunings, on the other >hand, there are 24 keys, each with its own >color and character. One can clearly dis- >cern the individuation of each key. It is >something subtle and, at the same time, >profound. Key colors are restored, giving >poignancy and meaningfulness to the har- >monies and their relationships. >I was tempted to sneak the old tunings >in unannounced to see if listeners would >sense something that sounded different >from that to which they had become accus- >tomed. In any case, there is no need for a >listener to fixate on the aspect of tuning at >all; it is simply interesting to explore how >we might respond to these tunings sponta- >neously and how we might integrate that >with our overall experience of the music. > >Regards, >Fred Sturm >University of New Mexico >fssturm at unm.edu > > > ------------------------------------------ Aaron Bousel abousel at comcast.net (413) 253-3544 (voice) (413) 253-3846 (voice & fax) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090226/41f325dd/attachment.html> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: PS Tuning Note 4a.JPG Type: image/jpeg Size: 189707 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090226/41f325dd/attachment.jpe>
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