----- Original Message ----- From: <A440A@AOL.COM> To: <pianotech@ptg.org> Sent: Sunday, October 22, 2000 6:46 AM Subject: Montal and Aristoxenes (wasHT Experience) > Montal's instructions are an interesting point. They were in a book > titles "How to Tune Your Own PIano". In them, one is instructed to tune four > contiguous minor 3rds to form the basis of the tuning. Try it! Do you have an English translation of this? I would like to try it. Unfortunalty I don't have an English translation of 'Art D'Accorder Soi-Meme Son Piano" if that is the book you are referring to. The most I have gotten from what little French I can understand that is that Montal showed that thirds and minor thirds in their pure form would not complete the octave, that they would have to be widened (3rds) or narrowed (m3rds) to get an octave, which demonstrated the need to temper the intervals. It would be interesting indeed if Montal did use contiguious 3rds as part of tuning instructions, rather than as examples of the the need to temper when tuning pianos. >If there was a non-technical piano owner back then that could come closer >than a Young to ET with these instructions, I would be stunned. It was hard >for me and I am a full time tuner. I don't think his instructions created much >exposure for ET at the time. First of all I don't know what a "Young" is. Is this the one that sought to eliminate the "wolf" by tuning half the scale in meantone 5ths and the other half in pure fifths? Actually I tuned a "Valotti Young" or was it a "Young Valotti" that Susan Cline sent me back in 1996. I was amazed at how easy it was. I was also amazed that I could not hear much if any difference when I played in that temp. But if you heard me play you might agree with a wink.... : () Anyhow I think in the French version of Montal (1836) mentioned above, the objective was ET. Many maintain that ET couldn't be defined until the coincident partials were understood and their beat rates could be calculated and that could not happen until after Helmholtz. (1870) This I would call modern ET. However the idea that the circle of fifths in tuning each 5th slightly flat would eliminate the wolf has existed since the time of Pythagoras. This is the rudementry form of ET. Just how much is "exactly flat" has eluded theorists until Helmholtz showed that beats of intervals occur between the coincident partials. It is my understanding that Montal described ET somewhere between rudementry and modern. I am hoping a forthcomming translation will prove that. > >>Modern orchestra >> woodwinds, reeds and brass instruments are built and tuned to ET. If you > >study the development of musical instrumenets you might wonder how they >> tuned flutes in the beginning. << > > Prior to the developement of the screw machine lathe ( Maudsley,1830?) > orchestral instruments were built to play in a particular key. With no > valves, natural horns played the overtones available within them. I wonder how recorders were bored and holed,and since there were ensambles of recorders how they were made to sound in tune. I suppose the same is true for brass but I wonder which had to be more precise.? If recorders are old, I suspect lutes as fretted instruments are older. And how are the frets spaced? ?? By an equal proportion of course. Did this "equal proportion mean anything to the makers of wood winds of flutes? That would be an interesting study. Try as I did in burning holes in bamboo flutes I never got an inkling on how the holes should be spaced other than to copy a good sounding one. >Obviously, > the higher in the overtone series you go, the closer the pitches are > together, so at some point up there, a chromatic scale can be formed. >This takes a whole lot of lip! Ha ha ! ! good pun.... > The lute tuning was greatly simplified by Mersenne's ratios, prior to >that, a good lutist was expected to be able to shift string pressure to >accomodate. This ratio (for the spacing of lute frets to give semitones) is 18/17 which is close to 98.95 cents or 99 cents. It was reported by Mersenne as the practice of lute makers rather than discovered by him. How they discovered this I would like to know. It is a superticular ratio, ie that the numerator is one more than the demoninator, which it seems Mersenne was eager to point out. >>>>>. >. I don't think ET was desired. I think it is the entropic end to a harmonic evolution. The modification of Pythagorean or Just Intonation that occurred between 1100 and 1400,resulting in meantone, was an attempt to extract the maximum usable harmony out of a twelve lever keyboard. This was done by tempering the previously pure fifths, and placing the pure harmony in the thirds. Polophony was increasing during this time, and the thirds were more in control of the harmony. > The crux here is that there are a growing number of musicians that >see ET as black and white, and are attracted to the color available in the > earlier tunings. Perhaps in a particularly Aristoxenean way, we may tune > more musically if we listen to physical sensations rather than following a mathematical formula. (the question is, could we sell those tunings........) In light of what we know now, I am suggesting that the technician of today is better prepared for tomorrow if they can offer more than one way to tune a piano. > Regards to all, > Ed Foote RPT I don't think I would offer, but would certainly do so if asked, or refer to someone who was better. ---ric
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC