Temperaments...

[Richard Moody]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org
> [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On Behalf Of Ron Koval
> Sent: Monday, April 05, 2004 8:23 AM
> To: pianotech@ptg.org
> Subject: Temperaments...
> 
> 
>It wasn't until I really dug into the subject a
> few years ago 
> that I realized that ET only exists in fixed pitch 
> instruments, such as the 
> piano and organ. 

Don't forget the first instrument that had to be constructed to ET in
order to exist as a musical instrument, the lute and later the guitar.
The proportional spacing of the frets results in ET or is ET depending
on how you want to think about it.  



> So much of the discussion is framed by 
> what we THINK is 
> the norm, not what actually IS the norm.   Think about that a 
> minute.  Not
> in orchestras, not in bands, not in choirs, not in ensembles, 
> ONLY when the 
> piano is brought into the mix does ET enter the picture.

To provide for the creation of music, composers and players and
listeners desire that some instruments must be built and tuned according
to ET.  The accordion, harmonica, reed organ, and all the orchestral
fixed pitch instruments, which includes flutes, woodwinds, saxophones,
xylophones, marimbas, glockenspiels, orchestra bells, tympani etc. Since
the octave is a universal interval, ET is a musical necessity, not a
"norm".    

 You mentioned you are a bassoon player.  Is your bassoon designed in
Et? If not, what?  


The only "norm" I know in music among players is to match pitch and
"make pleasing harmonies".  There is no temperament in these situations
unless you are playing a tempered instrument.  It a matter of tempered
instruments matching pitch with free pitch instruments, and the job of
the musician is to make his/her instrument sound good with all the
others. 


> 
> It becomes so obvious when you think about the speed of the
> thirds that we 
> work so hard to control on the piano.  Do you think that an 
> instrumentalist 
> would change the speed of the beating of the third, based on 
> where in the 
> scale it lies?  How impossible would that be?!  

I think you answered your question, it is impossible for
instrumentalists to be concerned with temperament while playing. 

Richard Moody      ric@pnotec.com

	"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves 
after a journey that no one can take us or spare us."
Marcel Proust (1871-1922); French novelist.


Ps  If you want a keyboard instrument tuned to a different temperament
that is OK, but why is the "norm" of ET for keyboard instruments for the
last 200 years so hard for some to acknowledge?