On Nov 30, 2009, at 7:38 PM, Israel Stein wrote: > Well, Fred, I don't know what you mean by "they made do", but there > is plentiful evidence that when it came to tuning, at least in > Italy, keyboards yielded to frets rather than the other way around. > At least that's what the writings of Vincenzo Galilei - one of the > foremost lutenists and theoreticians of the period (and Galileo's > father) - suggest In Rome, for a fairly short period during the mid 17th century, there was, indeed, a considerable buzz about equal temperament, centered around Galilei. Among other things, he is famous for having come up with the approximation of ET for setting frets: 18:17. This was a lively ET time, but was virtually confined to Rome, and lasted only about 20 years or so. The only major Italian composer outside Rome to be "converted" was Frecobaldi, but only late in life, after he had written all his important keyboard works. The overwhelming evidence for the rest of Italy, from shortly after 1500 to 1700 and beyond, shows 1/4 mean tone as the standard keyboard tuning, and the large majority of commentators during that period were quite critical of ET. Now this can obviously mean that they were occasionally exposed to ET - otherwise how would they know what it sounded like? But it was very much a minority tuning well into the 19th century in Italy. As for specific performance practices with respect to ensembles, and with respect to particular composers and compositions, there may well be evidence I am unaware of. As to whether there is "plentiful evidence" as you state, well, I'd very much like to see it. I mean that quite sincerely - not a rhetorical statement, but a desire. I am very much aware of Galilei's quite forceful promotion of ET, and there was certainly a strong movement in Rome during his time, which spread to a certain extent at least to France. But the bulk of evidence I am aware of (and I have been reading very, very extensively over the past several months, particularly the articles and books of Patrizio Barbieri, which cover the available evidence pretty comprehensively) suggests that this was quite limited in time and space, and that ET essentially died down in Italy until it was re-introduced from Germany in the late 18th century. To the original question, about what tuning would be appropriate, ET would definitely be my second choice, but from my own knowledge, I would put it in a ratio of at least 9:1 in favor of 1/4 mean tone unless there was compelling evidence otherwise. I'll note that in your example (which I certainly accept absolutely as an informed decision on the part of authoritative people), "the remainder performed in mean tone" (including their harpsichord and organ). So I wonder whether having the lutes and harpsichords tuned together is more important than having the winds, voices and harpsichord together. Someone has to be out of tune with someone. The lutes are stuck. The harpsichord isn't. So I would stick to my advice, and let them "make do." The lute's decay is pretty fast - it should be the odd one out. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091130/dc2c88a1/attachment.htm>
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