historical et (Long)

[Susan Kline]

Dear Stephen,

A most excellent post you just wrote. I feel I should clarify my position
here, though:

You said,
>Susan, in my earlier letter
>I was not suggesting that "music adapted once it was possible to tune a
>good ET". Heh presto...Arnold S came from ET.

I never intended to refer to your ideas in my comment. I was thinking for
myself, without reference to you, trying to turn the "chicken or egg
first?" argument this way and that, to see which side made more sense. 

I think that ET, chromatic harmonies, and the modern piano evolved
together; but to what degree each element affected the others is unknown to
me. In my head I drew a parallel between the development of a larger
compass and the development of ET and chromatic harmony. That is, piano
builders provided a wider octave span, and composers promptly used it. Did
they demand it, so builders _had_ to provide more octaves? Or did they use
what was made available? 

It seemed to me that people assume composers moved towards chromaticism on
their own, and the tuners accommodated them; so I wondered briefly if
perhaps some of the process had worked in reverse. 

Yes, I was aware of late Lisztian style.

No, I think Arnold S was a product of his time rather than of ET. He seems
to me to have been particularly susceptible to the horrors happening in
Europe during the Depression and Second World War, and that the shattering
of his earlier extended harmony (in Verklaerte Nacht, for instance) into
12-tone was an expression of a very dark mind set, for which no blame to
him, of course.  

The timing is wrong, anyway. ET wasn't new enough during Schoenberg's
formative period to have had a strong effect on him, IMHO. 

Regards,

Susan

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen wrote, in part:


>The business of musical vs instrument change. Susan, in my earlier letter
>I was not suggesting that "music adapted once it was possible to tune a
>good ET". Heh presto...Arnold S came from ET.  That causality is quite
>reversed.  By late 19th Century musical harmonic style was teetering on
>the verge of atonality, even by late Liszt. In this new harmonic freedom
>differentiation of keys is really a hindrance, since the very principle of
>the musical style is like the 12 musketeers' slogan. It makes perfect
>sense that piano tuners used more and more egal temperaments, culminating
>in our modern version that gets pretty close to true equality. The nail
>went firmly into the temperament coffin somewhere in the early 20th C,
>when ET was adopted as the true and only tuning for pianos, something that
>fits right up there with all those other ISO standards, like bolt and nut
>sizes. I notice something else that is disturbing...once ET became the
>standard it pretty much ensured that only your neighbourhood piano tech.
>has the wherewithall to set it. The days of self-tuning-pianists were
>pretty much over. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Susan Kline
P.O. Box 1651
Philomath, OR 97370
skline@proaxis.com		

"Relax! Between the inconceivably big and the inconceivably
small, there's an area where everything is perfetly conceivable!"
		-- Ashleigh Brilliant