Tom Sivak writes: <<Gregorian chant is a vocal form. I think it unlikely that they would sing perfect fifths and find that their thirds were too wide. I suppose that temperament also led 13th century composers to write parallel seconds and sevenths, a practice abandoned in the 14th century. << A closer study of Gothic intonation will make very clear that what we would call huge dissonances were actually a feature of the music. the following may help with understanding the logic of temperament as an influence on composition, (something that Mr. Sivak seems hell-bent on denying). - From Margo Schulter, ----------------------------- 2. The late Gothic (1300-1450) ------------------------------ The epoch of around 1325-1335 may herald two landmarks in the development of the organ: the first known collection of idiomatic keyboard music, the Robertsbridge Codex, and the advent of the "7+5" keyboard, all 12 notes of this keyboard being called for by the music of this collection. As Mark Lindley suggests, a 12-note Pythagorean tuning of Eb-G# would nicely fit this music. The Robertsbridge Codex, with proposed dates ranging from 1325 to 1365, includes both dance music and ornamented versions of vocal motets; both types of compositions will remain common in later keyboard sources. Lindley proposes that the keyboard practice of tuning sharps as Pythagorean flats (G# as Ab; C# as Db; F# as Gb) -- starting maybe around 1370 or 1380 in Florence, and common by the first decades of the 15th century -- may have had an influence not only on keyboard music, but on the vocal music of composers such as Ciconia and the young Dufay. In this tuning, thirds involving written sharps would be realized as Pythagorean diminished fourths, known by modern theorists as "schisma thirds" only a schisma (32805:32768) or ~1.95 cents from pure 5-based ratios. Lindley shows how, in collections such as the Buxheimer Organ Book, prolonged noncadential sonorities with these almost-pure thirds, are used as a "stock-in-trade." He suggests that the music of composers such as the early Dufay would also fit a kind of vocal intonation influenced by this kind of keyboard tuning. Around 1450, Mark Lindley infers a shift to meantone temperament in part from the style of compositions by Conrad von Paumann with successions of tertian sonorities which Lindley concludes are meant to be "firmer" than they would in a Pythagorean tuning. Around this same time, the vocal music of the later Dufay and Ockeghem similarly features such textures, suggesting a trend toward a 5-limit ideal. Here it might be best to say that the worlds of vocal and keyboard music -- and their intonational ideals -- are not unrelated, and may interact in various ways. Margo Schulter Tom Sivak again: >>Orchestral music is played in just intonation. Each player constantly tunes his instrument adjusting each note. Hmm, that is some trick. According to Howard Rosen, horns and reeds are built to play in ET, so you have an entire orchestra adjusting their intonation on the fly, arriving together at Just intonation? This beggars the imagination. ( at least, my beggarly imagination). Tom again: >>Temperament only exists on keyboard instruments. Not in the minds of composers. When a composer writes an orchestral piece, he thinks in just intonation. << I don't see how the writer can know what is in the minds of composers, at least to this degree. I won't call this sort of statement arrogant or self-inflated, simply specious. Much more to come, "my" pianists are looking at some of the posts and formulating some classical rebuttals. Regards, Ed Foote RPT
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC