Historical temperamentals

[Richard Moody]

----------
> From: Robert A Murphy <murphyr@pilot.msu.edu>
> To: pianotech@ptg.org
> Subject: Historical temperamentals
> Date: Saturday, August 07, 1999 11:48 AM
> 

> 
> I just got back from a week long gig at the Lincoln Center, preparing an 1830
> Graf fortepiano for Robert Levin and the Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique
> (Sir John Eliot Gardiner, conductor).  Gardiner's group and the Academy of
> Ancient Music (Christopher Hogwood), with whom I worked with several years back
> on a 5-octave instrument, preferred my tuning the instrument in use, in equal
> temperament, somewhat to my surprise.


 
> I think I've come to understand the above Period Instrument groups' reasons for
> requesting equal temperament in the instances I assisted with, being that the
> context of the music being played was better represented by it, instead of the
> date of instrument dictating the tuning.    Extinguishers please?
> 
> Robert Murphy
> Piano Technician
> Michigan State University

Extinguishers?   Au contraire. Come on in the water is fine.  ; )   
	 As research continues  historical evidence is mounting that ET has been around a
lot longer than the proponents of  "other than ET" have been proposing.. Aristoxenes
of the ancient Greeks mentions the concept of  it.  (perhaps this is where the
differences of diatonic semitones, enharmonic semitiones and chromatic semitiones
arose, or the "three genres" of music)  Mersenne in 1637 gives lute and monochord
distances accurate from .00 to .04 cents.  The relation of Bach and Werkmeister and
what Werkmeister actually proposed and what Bach actually used, is always an
interesting study.  Whether Bach wanted less of a wolf or more of an equal ratio, is
open to interpretation. 
	The problem it seems is that ET was a goal, but no one knew how to tune it. More
precisely it was apparent that if the fifths could be tempered the "right amount"
there would be no wolf. . But how to acheive this other than trial by error was the
only method available. No way was known to utilize the twelth root of two in tuning.
 How the tuners from Bach on actually practiced is being researched, but little
direct evidence remains. All we can conclude is that anything "close enuf"  was
probably the norm. The theorists were the ones who published, and thus their
knowledge was preserved, but they for the most part were not tuners. How many tuners
tuned how close to which (or any) that was proposed by the theorists? 

1830 is aprox 100 years after Bach and Werkmeister, so ET had at least that long to
be attempted in  keyboard tunings. There is very convincing evidence cited in the
Groves (14 vol edition)  article "Temperament" Mark Lindley; that organs in Northern
Germany were tuned to ET at least as far back as 1800. For the rest of Europe,
Meantone was the standard tuning and it is believed that went back to the 1400's. 

Of the many temperaments proposed between Meantone and Equal Temperament, there is
no evidence (so far) of any composition being intended for any particular
temperament. Even if there were,  there is no evidence as to what was actually
heard, because of how consistant tuners were or were not in any given temperament.
So the choice of ET especially in "remote" keys is as valid as any other choice.
Back to 1800 at least.  ric.