Fred writes,
>>I can find no way to connect 20th century VT practice with the Victorian Era, other than Owen Jorgensen's fantasy. The facts simply aren't there.
These facts are not simple. It is good to remember that it is our interpretation of history and its record, not fact, that we make our decisions upon.
>>It is very useful to try to get at some way of defining what constitutes the margin of error within which the vast majority of people will say "that is a tuning recognizable as ET and a good one." A baseline. It is also very useful to step back and wonder what differences do actually register with the listener - the average listener, the acute listener, the one-of-a-kind listener.<<
The stimulative effects of dissonance, and the sedative effects of consonance are involutary. It is less of a hearing difference(intellectual determination), than a difference in emotional response. So, for us to determine the effect of temperament would require we listen to a comparison, and THEN survey to find out which type of intonation(temperament) has more emotional impact. My opinion is that the unequal temperaments create more of an emotional response than ET. This opinion has been formed by the last 12 presentations I have been part of in which ET and WT were compared. Some of these were blind, some were audiences of tuners, sometimes music lovers, sometimes piano faculty. The response has been consistent, the WT is always overwhelmingly favored, regardless of repertoire. What does this tell us?
If anyone has a question of this, I make this offer: I will compare a straight FAC based, WT tuning against the finest, most refined ET that any tech, or group of techs,would like to put on a similar instrument. Play anything from Brahms or before, it doesn't matter. I submit that the vast majority of listeners will prefer the WT.
Regards,
Ed Foote RPT
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