hysterical temperaments

[Horace Greeley]

Jim and list,



At 03:37 AM 3/20/97 -0700, you wrote:
>
>To Doug and the list:
>
 - snip -

>  You can
>see that by just changing 4 notes from ET you can have much more color
>distinction in the various tonalities which is what the classical
>Boroque and even Romantic musicians dealt with.
>

Jim has pretty well stated my own case.  Modifying ET tuning in this way
allows a very great deal of latitude, and, doesn't get the piano so far
from ET
that it is a bear to redo, as needed.  Further, changes can be made much
_like_
they would have when the various well temperaments were in more general
use, and, the keyboard players (most likely) did their own tuning.

When doing this kind of tuning (and, of course, accompanying that doing with
an expectation that ordinary folks will "ooh" and "ah"), it helps me to
keep in
mind that ours is a relatively young profession - as an independently
practiced
one.  Realistically, only 150 years or so old.  To a certain degree, we owe
our
existence to the same changes that drove piano development in the 19th Cent.
Greater power (and all that goes with it) means greater tension (duh), and
more time
to do the work.  (Highly glib, but I think you know what I mean.)  This is
a very
different story than tuning (in the case of the harpsichord, anyway) what
amounted
to a whole bunch of monochords which happen to be assembled into one case.
Low
tension, the plucker plucks or it doesn't, etc.  (Sorry, harpsichord buffs,
I acknowledge
that this glosses over a good deal of important ground, but, if one
restricts the discussion
to the intracacies of tuning only, I hope we can agree that the harpsichord
is, by
comparison, more easily tuned than the piano.)

The point here is that as our end of things has developed along its own
track, performers
have become increasingly divorced (by and large, big generalization here)
from direct
interaction with their instrument(s).  Thus, aural information of which we, as
technicians, are (hopefully) aware as a part of our intellectual process,
most of them
will be aware of (if at all) as a greater tranparency of the instrument.

This is pretty far out, I'll quit while I'm ahead.  (Assuming of course,
that I am.)


>PS Perhaps if there is enough interest, I'll explain how I came up with
>an even better Well temperament which have even less differences in the
>4ths and 5ths and more difference in the 3rds and 6ths - the Coleman VII.
>There are no objectionable beats in this temperament. Tone color is more
>distinct, but you wont hear any bothersome intervals.


Jim, I, for one, am interested.

Dogs and tricks, you know.

Best.

Horace




Horace Greeley

Stanford University
email: hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu
voice mail: 415.725.9062
LiNCS help line: 415.725.4627