Ed, I have a few specific questions in reference to extracted lines from of your message, as follows: On Sun, 6 Oct 1996 A440A@aol.com wrote: <big snips throughout> ... >The Young(1799) temperament is the workhorse well temperament for me. >The Victorian that Owen publishes is nice, but too subtle for >Mozart sounded better in a Prinz, >but Beethoven takes on stuff [that] can sound good on a Prinz/Neidhart, >Chopin can become very interesting if played on the DeMorgan, > The increased inharmonicity of our modern pianos should be taken into >account when deciding on temperaments. What was tolerably smooth on a >harpsichord is usually harsher on the modern piano. Thus, a temperament in >favor during a composers day, on the older instrument, becomes a lot more of >a harmonic handful when their music is performed on a modern, high tension >scale. >Ed Foote Ed, Since a modern piano tone contains a lower percentage of higher partials, it seems to me that it should be MORE tolerant of extreme temperament than a harpsichord. Not only is this borne out by my experience in tuning well and meantone temperaments, but there are historical documents that indicate that there was an intent to reduce the over-all number of beat rates so that the temperament itself (in the more common 50% of keys) is inherently more harmonious than equal temperament. What IS different about music played on pianos is that it is often more modern music that is written in key signatures of more that three sharps or flats-- THAT may be what is heard as more harsh in an historical temperament. What do you think? Bill Bailer \\\ William Bailer wbailer@cris.com \\\ Rochester, NY, USA phone: 716-473-9556 \\\ Interests: acoustics, JSBach, anthropology, piano technology
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