[CAUT] Goldberg Variations report

[Ed Sutton]

The harmonic vocabulary of Goldberg is rather limited. For something like that, you could make a catalog of chords needed and not needed, and perhaps design something for the occasion.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Donald McKechnie 
  To: caut at ptg.org 
  Sent: Wednesday, October 07, 2009 11:43 AM
  Subject: [CAUT] Goldberg Variations report


  Oh, I don't know Fred, I kind of liked the idea of Tuner's Discretion. :-) Unfortunately it did not work out to my taste. It would have been nice to try different temperaments and at least listen to some selected variations to determine the best. I was going from what the players were telling me. Even they had differing opinions. It is just so subjective at times! When I get the chance, I will give Poletti's Werckmeister instructions a look and give it a try. When they do the Big Bach Bash again next year I hope to spend more time trying different temperaments.


  Thanks!
  Don 


  Donald McKechnie
  Piano Technician
  Ithaca College
  dmckech at ithaca.edu
  607.274.3908


    From: Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu>

    Date: October 7, 2009 11:06:18 AM EDT

    To: caut at ptg.org

    Subject: Re: [CAUT] Goldberg Variations report

    Reply-To: caut at ptg.org




    On Oct 5, 2009, at 10:33 AM, Donald McKechnie wrote:


      I started out with Valotti/Young since it is nicely centered on G. I also tried Kirnberger and Werckmeister. All of these three worked well for the most part but there were certain passages in a number of the variations where things got too spicy. I tried a few others from rollingball.com but the results were similar.


      I was not getting anywhere with the temperaments so I decided to practice that old tradition of Tuner's Discretion. Since Valotti/Young is centered on G I tweaked a few of the accidentals thus slowing down some of the thirds. I put this tuning on the instruments for the dress rehearsal. They said this worked well. I was not at the dress so this modified temperament is what I used for the recital.


      What I heard in the recital is a bit different from the report I got after the dress rehearsal. I found the modified Valotti/Young a bit too spicy for my taste in certain passages. For the most part the faster variations sounded pretty good but there were times in most of the slow variations where it did not work for me. The one exception was the slow variation #25. It really worked on this piece. Quite surprising!


    Very interesting account. The back and forth between not spicy enough and too spicy is quite revealing. Lehman is not spicy enough, but Vallotti is too spicy. They are really quite close, and I'd say Lehman would be about the best choice for someone who wanted a temperament like Vallotti but a bit milder. Essentially, Vallotti is a string of six 1/6 comma 5ths (about twice as narrow as ET, 3.6 cents narrow) together with a string of six just 5ths. Lehman basically just takes one of those 1/6 comma 5ths and divides its narrowness between two 5ths (two 1/12 comma 5ths, about ET size, 1.8 cents narrow). The details (if you include the "schisma" 5th, which is 2 cents narrow), makes it just a little bit milder still, but the difference is quite subtle. The widest 3rds become slightly smaller than Pythagorean, while Vallotti does have three Pythagorean thirds (two i you account for the schisma 5th, which Vallotti did - I don't remember just now what Young did, whether he was using syntonic or Pytahgorean comma 5ths).
     With Kirnberger III and Werckmeister, you have the same Pythagorean thirds as Vallotti (more of them in Kirnberger), but the narrow 5ths can sound pretty objectionable to someone unaccustomed to mean tone.
      Tweaking a few accidentals is a tricky business, as any individual change has more than one additional consequence (there is an equal and opposite one, but others as well). If you move an accidental in Vallotti, you are narrowing one pure 5th, but widening another, so you are adding to the total "out of tuneness" of the thirds, taken as a whole. Really, I think you have to have a total structure in mind and follow a pattern (meaning, practically speaking, a chain of 5ths), or you are almost bound to run into trouble. If you want to emulate what tuners did then, I think that the Werckmeister practical instructions I posted a link to earlier is a good starting point. http://www.polettipiano.com/Pages/pag1engpaul.html


    Regards,
    Fred Sturm
    University of New Mexico
    fssturm at unm.edu




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