[CAUT] ET vs UET

[G Cousins]

Just received a book from one of the theroy profs.  (Music history Phd)
 
"How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care)"
Ross W. Duffin 


Might throw some interesting curve balls on this thread.  Yes.....it's baseball season.


Gerry Cousins 
 






Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2010 07:25:30 -0500
From: johnsond at stolaf.edu
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: Re: [CAUT] ET vs UET

Hi- 



Ok..  It's always a good exercise to step back occasionally and ask questions.  What scares me is when the word authentic gets taken too far- on either side of the equation. Part of the magic is that nothing can be exactly authentic. That's the nature of it.  The best we do is work with the spirit of something past, and this goes both for tuning in a personal Victorian style and for the best concert ET tuners today.  Same thing.  We have already discussed previously that tuning with a personal interpretation is probably the most "authentic" method.  At least we know for a fact that no one had FAC tunings in the 19th century!  Even though generally we say that the piano achieved is modern development by this time in the 19th century, we also know that it's still not the same. Lots of differences. What about concert voicing and prep?  I haven't seen historical documentation of that, but I would be surprised if concert technician in the Victorian days were given the hours/days of detailed prep time as outlined by Ulrich Gerhartz.  That is a question.  If not, is all his work somehow less appropriate?  I don't think so.  It's good to ask questions and talk about these issues.  I'm all for that.  This is a good thing, and hopefully no one takes offense because of it.  There will never be a consensus of taste though.  


For the record, there is one other thing I'd like to clarify in this public forum. I have stood for a long time on the side of these non-ET, personalized tunings. That works for my style mostly because I run a one person department. There is an obvious incentive to standardize procedure when several technicians are working on the same instruments.  That is a simple practical matter.  Manufacturers, for example, could not have one technician tuning different than everyone else. Doesn't work.  That is one of the reasons I love where I work, fully realizing that if for whatever reason I was in a different kind of situation I may not have some of these same freedoms (luxuries) I do now.  That's just how it is and I understand that.  For better or worse, I believe this practical reality also had significant influence in the standardization of ET.


cheers,


Dennis Johnson


___________


On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 6:55 PM, Fred Sturm <fssturm at unm.edu> wrote:


On Apr 22, 2010, at 1:38 PM, Dennis Johnson wrote:


If there is art at work here, then this bit is an example.  Are players stopped because the majority of the audience may not pick up all the subtleties of their interpretation?  Top chefs do not much talk about the clever and subtle ingredients that go into their work, but that makes the whole experience what it is.  I really don't care much to the degree that my customers notice subtle differences between my work and someone else.  Some know, most don't.


       I certainly don't mean to argue against the pursuit of "perfection" or "art" to the highest degree. And as a performer I am quite aware that the subtleties of much of what I do (and which years of effort has allowed me to do) are missed by most, yet am convinced that the totality of those details makes a profound difference. Maybe not to every audience member, but to some (at the very least, to me).
       But there are a couple things I am trying to get at. First and foremost, we need to distinguish between history and fantasy. Imagination is a great tool for recreating history, but it needs to be based quite thoroughly on facts, whatever bits and pieces we have (and all of them put together relating to the subject at hand). 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.
       The second thing I would like to get at is a sense of parameters. We all know pianos are metal and wood, and what we aim at we never hit exactly. And it doesn't last. In the modern piano it lasts much better than in the early 19th century one, with a wooden framework. People are people, and ability levels, while varied between individuals to a remarkable degree, are pretty constant for the average. So there is always a margin of error, sometimes a large one. 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. Best of all would be to find this out in a controlled, dispassionate way. What we choose to do beyond the baseline and why is a very individual thing.
       How many people (if any) will hear this particular subtlety I am trying to introduce? Can I even hear it myself, if I am dispassionate about it? This is the sort of question I ask of my own work, and I think it is a very useful thing to do. If nothing else, it keeps me grounded and lets me know where to spend my time (when I am not typing away at the computer <G>. As I have been doing a bit more than usual recently). 




Regards,
Fred Sturm
fssturm at unm.edu
http://www.createculture.org/profile/FredSturm


 		 	   		  
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