Piano History

During my research on Montal, in order to try to assess his book in relation to other printed materials of the time on the same subject, I obtained a copy of "The Tuner's Guide: containing a complete treatise on tuning the piano-forte, organ, melodeon and seraphine; together with a specification of defects and their remedies." I scanned this book, and thought I'd share it with you - also archive it so people interested can find it.

The copy I obtained through interlibrary loan was actually published in Boston, in 1852, by the Oliver Ditson company. It is, however, a copy of the very same book published in England, with some editions dated and some not, and from the text it seems to come from the 1830s or perhaps as late as the 1840s. It is anonymous, and is actually a compilation of short articles (some perhaps originally published as pamphlets). There are, for example, three very different methods of setting an equal temperament, together with an article on the Earl of Stanhope's alteration of Kirnberger II. There is no relationship between any two articles: none refers to any of the others.

The repair section is very sketchy, but interesting in the details it mentions. One reason for dating it early is the description of the upright pianos, which are models common to the period before the "cottage" upright that swept the world beginning a little before 1850. 

Comparing it to Montal's book: well, it's like comparing Cliff's Notes to a real book. For one thing, the length is 72 pages in very small format, well less than 10% the size in terms of word count, and next to no detail. But this little book seems to have been - best I have been able to ascertain - the basic handbook of piano technicians in England (and maybe the US) for most of the 19th century. 

Anyway, I will let you judge for yourselves. I am particularly puzzled by the last temperament scheme, which makes no sense at all. I claims that all the thirds and sixths will be "perfect," all of them. Fifths are a little narrow and fourths are a little wide. Well, there was a lot of misinformation out there at the time. Some were claiming that a circle of just fourths would produce a circle of slightly narrow fifths, for instance.

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Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
"When I smell a flower, I don't think about how it was cultivated. I like to listen to music the same way." -Federico Mompou
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Fantastic! Thanks, Fred!

Haven't given it but the quickest of perusals, but it seems as though there is no discussion whatsoever of beat rates. I also see where the author mentions that old myth of how "by nature" the fifth can bear less tempering than the third. This myth is of course disproven by the several centuries of use of 1/4 comma meantone (or even 1/5th). I suspect this story comes from Werckmeister, who dreamed-up his whole religious metaphor about octave-fifth-third being like God-Christ-Man, and the further from perfection, the more tempering needed, all this as argument to try to convince people of the need to give up the wonderful sound of pure major thirds.

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Paul Poletti
Builder/restorer historic keyboard instruments
Poletti Pianos
Barcelona
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Paul,
Doesn't Rameau also make the argument that the octave and unison need to be purest, then the 5th and 4th, then the 3rd, in a hierarchical manner? And this is the basis of his rationalist argument for the use of equal temperament? I kind of doubt he read Werckmeister, though I could be wrong. But the English would have read Rameau.

In any case, the varied instructions in the Tuner's Guide show a lot less sophistication than Montal's, by several levels of magnitude. And definitely no discussion of beat rates. That occurs only amongst the amateur scholars of the Philosophical Magazine, and I would guess it never percolated down to the craftsmen who actually tuned instruments - not until late in the 19th century.

Do you have any of the analogous early published material in German? I seem to remember the name Fritz from McGeary's article (I don't have it by me at the moment) as having given reasonable tuning instructions for ET as well as some material about repairs. McGeary mentioned a few other sources as well, none of which I have been able to trace - but given the recent boom in scanning and posting of books, I should probably search again.


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Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm@unm.edu
http://fredsturm.net
"When I smell a flower, I don't think about how it was cultivated. I like to listen to music the same way." -Federico Mompou
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-30-2014 03:39
From: Paul Poletti
Subject: Tuner's Guide, a book from the early 1800s

Fantastic! Thanks, Fred!

Haven't given it but the quickest of perusals, but it seems as though there is no discussion whatsoever of beat rates. I also see where the author mentions that old myth of how "by nature" the fifth can bear less tempering than the third. This myth is of course disproven by the several centuries of use of 1/4 comma meantone (or even 1/5th). I suspect this story comes from Werckmeister, who dreamed-up his whole religious metaphor about octave-fifth-third being like God-Christ-Man, and the further from perfection, the more tempering needed, all this as argument to try to convince people of the need to give up the wonderful sound of pure major thirds.

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Paul Poletti
Builder/restorer historic keyboard instruments
Poletti Pianos
Barcelona
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Hi Fred,

I have to admit not to have read all of Rameau as my French comprehension mostly comes through speaking Catalan, and thus it is slow going. He could well have said such, it was common currency during the 18th century when meantone suddenly fell out of fashion and ET was the bee's knees - at least in theory if not in practice. But I think that if you know how to listen, and using modern psychoacoustic theory, you can argue that it is exactly the opposite, that the third loses it's characteristic identity much more quickly than the fifth when detuned. The difference is that is takes more sophisticated hearing to discern the presence of the true identity of a thirds than a fifth. Fifths are for Liebhaber, thirds are for Kenner.

;-)

But as far as I can figure, Werckmeister is the first to actually say such a thing, which corresponds with the beginning of the move away from meantone, even though it would take almost a century for the process to complete itself.

I think I have a copy of everything published in German which still exists, maybe one or two I haven't been able to run down yet. These days almost everything can be had at the Bayerische Statsbibliotek:

https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de

What's not there can usually be found somewhere via Google.de. Only a few I have had to custom order from libraries. If you can't easily find something, let me know and I'll pass you a copy. Actually, I was thinking it would be a good idea to put all these pdfs in one location so that people can easily consult the original sources.

Re: McGeary. It's a good start, but he really made an absolute shambles of Fritz. His interpretation of Fritz's three types of purity is pure fantasy on his part and has nothing whatsoever to do with what Fritz actually said. You really wonder if McGeary actually read Fritz cover to cover, or only some brief extracts, perhaps in translation. In any case, Fritz's method only works if you are a rank amateur, which seems to be the level of his hearing despite the fact that he was a harpsichord and organ builder and claimed to have lots of experience tuning. For example, he ridiculed Sorge for saying that every deep tone has a note at 2 octaves and a major thirds higher which sounds softly within it, and which could be used to judge the tempering of the thirds. He claimed that Sorge was trying to tune using "a delusion of the ears". His proof: if this were true, than the minor triad would be "perturbed"! Sorge quite rightly took the holy shit out of Fritz, his entire book of 1758 (Zuverlässige Anweisung, Claviere und Orgeln behörig zu temperiren und zu stimmen) being a merciless take-down of his method. Sorge begins by calling him "our brave Tuning Knight", who armed with naught but his trusty hammer and a pair of "mechanical ears", dares to enter the labyrinth of the tonalities and subdue the Minotaur without getting eaten alive. The criticism gets keener and cuts deeper (and gets funnier and funnier) as the work goes on. Fritz must have been furious (unfortunately he wrote no reply, none could have been written, as Sorge knew what he was talking about).

Ciao,

P

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Paul Poletti
Builder/restorer historic keyboard instruments
Poletti Pianos
Barcelona
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