Greetings, I think it was Don that wrote: >>It is my contention that the octave stretch style used has a much larger >>affect on the sound of the piano than the often subtle differences between > >temperaments. Well, my experience leads me to disagree. Stretching the living daylights out of an ET does nothing to create a harmonic texture in the modulations. Everything is still beating the same. It certainly feels "tenser", but ET feels tense in comparison to WT's anyway. The more stretch, the faster the thirds or 17ths. Obviously, more stimulative, but still the same non-changing haze of 14 or more cents beating everywhere. Regardless of the stretch, there are no "points of rest" from the physical dissonance. I have met people that don't register any difference between temperaments, ET or otherwise, and those that feel it is one of the most profound discoveries in their musical pursuit, so when the difference between ET and say, a Young, is called "subtle", I have to wonder about the re ception. We are talking about the WT difference between a 7 cent C-E and a 17 cent E-G#!! There isn't much subtle about this degree of contrast, but it can escape the listener that is focussed on something else. >The difference between sloppy equal temperament and a > >careful equal temperament is rather hard to hear when playing music, but > >the difference between wide octaves and narrow ones is quite noticeable. ET, by its nature, is all out of tune, everywhere. So, a "sloppy" ET is not all that distinguishable from a perfect one because you are comparing out of tune with more out of tune. We can assume that the "sloppiness" creates thirds that are wider than 13.7 cents, but this is not very noticeable if kept to a cent or two extra here and there, especially if it is not following the customary form that composers would have been familiar with. What you have then is scrambled harmonic construction and the composers' carefully crafted rises and falls of musical tension never occur. Of course the sloppiness isn't noticed, there is no organization to any harmonic direction the composer may have created and the music lacks the "character" made manifest by the original harmonic components. The resources of WT seem to be widely used in the pre-1850 music and getting an appropriate temperament in use for this music can create results that are only "subtle" to those that have yet to acquire a sensitivity to the effect. Textural sensitivity is a learned skill, but I have seen so many acquire it that those that don't recognize it impress me a being resistant for non-musical reasons. To be sure, I have seen it rejected by a small number of musicians that gave it a good try, so there is no right and wrong here, just differences of taste. However, the difference of effect found in WT is sensual, not intellectual, so the listener who is straining to identify the trees is going to miss the forest. Also, it might be of interest that stretching the octaves in a WT doens't necessarily increase the beating of the more consonant intervals to a level that is noticed,but certainly heats up the more expressive keys that have thirds faster than ET to begin with. It can increase the effect, though sometimes at the expense of clarity in the slower passages. I would suggest that two pianos tuned in two wildly different stretches compared to one tuned in a WT (that has at least 6 cents between its mildest and most expressive thirds) will sound much more alike than either will to the WT. I also maintain that there is more musical "meaning" available from a WT, it is a more complex arrangement and contains greater harmonic resources due to its palette of consonance values. However, since "meaning" is a product of a message being received and NOT a unique quality of the message itself, the "meaning" is dependant on how the listener receives that message. This makes the listener the greatest variable because it makes the "meaning" of musical sound a function of both the listener's experience and ex pectation. I can't do anything about the former, but the latter is certainly dependant on today and is just as important. Regards, Ed Foote RPT
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