Piano History

This has been a very interesting thread, to which I have unfortunately not been able to contribute as much as I would have liked (moving shop plus a nearly-full time teaching load). A few quick comments:

I've been tuning harpsichords, clavichords and small organs for about 35 years, and pianos up to 1840 or so, mostly Viennese, both originals and copies, but I've done several Broadwoods and a number of French instruments, including the new copy of the 1802 Erard (like Beethoven's) for the Paris museum which came out of Chris Clarke's workshop (I was a member of the 3-man construction team, and belive me, an instrument like this needs 3 people!). I have never tuned any UT closer to ET than the Neidhardt and Sorge temperaments, and I tune ET fairly regularly.

I would say that there is something intangible about an quasi-ET UT temperament, something which makes it less monotonous than ET. How close you can apporach ET without losing this, I wouldn't venture to say. But Mark Lindley's "Bach" temperament is pretty close, and he has demonstrated that differences are quite readily audible, though subtle. That said, ET is perfect for the literature concieved in it. French Romantic and Impressionistic organ music, for example; all that slippy-slidey chromatiscism demands ET, and when you get to Messean, you realize that playing with color in ET is another ball of wax altogether. In order to understand what that is really about, you have to hear it in a big French cathedral on a big French 19th-century intrument tuned in ET, with French light coming through the windows. Having played a good amount of that literature (Frank, Vierne, Widor, Messean), I can say that I never really understood it until one afternoon when I was killing a few hours between tunings in Nante, I happened to wander into the cathedral when the organist was practicing, and I had just such an experience; suddenly everything fell into place. Awesome!!

RE: testing the theory. It should be obvious that comparing recordings done on different instruments, or even the same instrument in different acoustical conditions, is NOT objective. Let's be honest; we are talking about subtleties here. Perhaps once your ear has become attuned to the differences which UT have to offer, you can hear it across different acoustical conditions, but to simply put such recordings out to the general public and ask which one they prefer proves absolutely nothing. There are simply too many variables to allow us to pin any preference solely on the temperament.

RE: Schubert and temperament. Schubert is perhaps my favorite composer. I can tell you from many years of listening to his music on the pianos for which he wrote, you cannot begin to understand his music until you hear on early 19th-century Viennese instruments. He was indeed an absolute master in creating colors, but he played with the register differences which these instruments have, not so much with temperament, if at all. When I hear Schubert on a modern piano, or an English or French piano of the early 19th-c, all these colors and textures are simply not there. Having heard Schubert in a number of different temperaments from ET to Neidhardt on many different historical instruments (Graf, Streicher, Walter, Fritz, Schantz, Brodmann, etc), I would say that temperament doesn't really matter. The colors from the masterful register play are so strong that subtitles in temperament play second fiddle. That said, once the overall pallet is correct, temperament might add a slight extra element of interest, but it would be very slight, and I have never really noticed any improvement using any historical UT, which in general are more differenetiated than the supposed "Victorian" temperaments. But I repeat: you cannot gain any real insight into Schubert's compositional technique until you hear his music on the proper instrument. Anything else will always be a very distant second.

RE: Beethoven. Opus 106 blows away any and all arguments one might make in favor of UT. It is obviously conceived within an environment of tonality equality. In the 4th movement, tonalities go by like Belgian villages on the Eurostar; blink, and you've missed them. He is constantly morphing across enharmonic divides, flipping multiple sharps into multiple flats at the drop of a hat without giving it a second thought. This piece has many similarities to the free improvs of Keith Jarrett, and I'm not the only one who thinks this fugue is the invention of Jazz. BTW, the intro is something modern pianists will NEVER understand because they have no idea what it is to play this piece on a c.1815 Viennese grand. They try to make it into some mysterious statement about who knows what. But if you know the instruments he had at hand, and also know what an absolute monster of a piece this was for them, you realize that in the tradition of the unmeasured lute prelude, Beethoven is simply checking out the tuning and the temperament before he starts to play. Hoppy Smith does this to great delight of the audience; he starts what seems to be a prelude, but he's really just improvising, exploring the keys he will need for the piece at hand, then he adjusts the tuning of a string here and there while he is playing, plays a bit more, adjusts another string, and when he is satisfied, he ties it up with a nice neat cadence in the right key, and then begins the piece proper. What's the first thing I do when I arrive to tune such a big 6 1/2 octave Wiener before a concert? I check the octaves, just like Beethoven. That's the primary concern with these beasts, because the upper and lower halves of the instrument drift out of tune in opposite directions (due to the wooden frame), and if you don't know the lay of the land before you start, you're in for unpleasant surprises in the form of two or three tunings. If the octaves are more or less OK, I check the temperament by playing various thirds and noodling a bit, just like Beethoven. After tuning, I bang around a bit to make sure it will stay, again checking octaves and thirds... just like Beethoven. When I'm sure the instrument is well-tuned and stable, I put my tools away and leave. Beethoven, on the other hand, says, "Ok, pre-flight inspection passed, all systems normal, cleared for take-off, fasten your seat-belts and hold on to your hats 'cause there's gonna be turbulence like you ain't never felt before! Here we goooooooooOOOOOOOOOO!!"

RE: testing the theory again. I would posit that the best way to do an objective test as to whether or not temperament makes a perceivable difference, use a high-quality piano synth, either software (like Native Instruments' various packages) or a good electronic instrument, and drive it with a good MIDI performance. This allows you to isolate the temperament alone; no differences due to acoustics or the playing.

Finally, metaphors for UT vs. ET. I have always felt it is like the difference between black-and-white and colors movies. In classes for music students, I always use the wonderful moment from the Wizard of Oz, starting from where the tornado is approaching and Dorothy is trying to get home, and then the house gets sucked up into the tornado, that wonderful bit of 1930's special affects where she is looking out the window at all the things and creatures that have been sucked-up as well, including Miss Gulch who morphs into the Wicked Witch, all in B/W, and after the house falls, she opens the door on Oz and suddenly everything is in breathtaking beautiful color. When you hear meantone for the first time, you definitely know you're not in Kansas anymore!

Now, THAT'S a good metaphor for ET: Kansas!

This has been a very interesting thread, to which I have unfortunately not been able to contribute as much as I would have liked (moving shop plus a nearly-full time teaching load). A few quick comments:

I've been tuning harpsichords, clavichords and small organs for about 35 years, and pianos up to 1840 or so, mostly Viennese, both originals and copies, but I've done several Broadwoods and a number of French instruments, including the new copy of the 1802 Erard (like Beethoven's) for the Paris museum which came out of Chris Clarke's workshop (I was a member of the 3-man construction team, and belive me, an instrument like this needs 3 people!). I have never tuned any UT closer to ET than the Neidhardt and Sorge temperaments, and I tune ET fairly regularly.

I would say that there is something intangible about an quasi-ET UT temperament, something which makes it less monotonous than ET. How close you can apporach ET without losing this, I wouldn't venture to say. But Mark Lindley's "Bach" temperament is pretty close, and he has demonstrated that differences are quite readily audible, though subtle. That said, ET is perfect for the literature concieved in it. French Romantic and Impressionistic organ music, for example; all that slippy-slidey chromatiscism demands ET, and when you get to Messean, you realize that playing with color in ET is another ball of wax altogether. In order to understand what that is really about, you have to hear it in a big French cathedral on a big French 19th-century intrument tuned in ET, with French light coming through the windows. Having played a good amount of that literature (Frank, Vierne, Widor, Messean), I can say that I never really understood it until one afternoon when I was killing a few hours between tunings in Nante, I happened to wander into the cathedral when the organist was practicing, and I had just such an experience; suddenly everything fell into place. Awesome!!

RE: testing the theory. It should be obvious that comparing recordings done on different instruments, or even the same instrument in different acoustical conditions, is NOT objective. Let's be honest; we are talking about subtleties here. Perhaps once your ear has become attuned to the differences which UT have to offer, you can hear it across different acoustical conditions, but to simply put such recordings out to the general public and ask which one they prefer proves absolutely nothing. There are simply too many variables to allow us to pin any preference solely on the temperament.

RE: Schubert and temperament. Schubert is perhaps my favorite composer. I can tell you from many years of listening to his music on the pianos for which he wrote, you cannot begin to understand his music until you hear on early 19th-century Viennese instruments. He was indeed an absolute master in creating colors, but he played with the register differences which these instruments have, not so much with temperament, if at all. When I hear Schubert on a modern piano, or an English or French piano of the early 19th-c, all these colors and textures are simply not there. Having heard Schubert in a number of different temperaments from ET to Neidhardt on many different historical instruments (Graf, Streicher, Walter, Fritz, Schantz, Brodmann, etc), I would say that temperament doesn't really matter. The colors from the masterful register play are so strong that subtitles in temperament play second fiddle. That said, once the overall pallet is correct, temperament might add a slight extra element of interest, but it would be very slight, and I have never really noticed any improvement using any historical UT, which in general are more differenetiated than the supposed "Victorian" temperaments. But I repeat: you cannot gain any real insight into Schubert's compositional technique until you hear his music on the proper instrument. Anything else will always be a very distant second.

RE: Beethoven. Opus 106 blows away any and all arguments one might make in favor of UT. It is obviously conceived within an environment of tonality equality. In the 4th movement, tonalities go by like Belgian villages on the Eurostar; blink, and you've missed them. He is constantly morphing across enharmonic divides, flipping multiple sharps into multiple flats at the drop of a hat without giving it a second thought. This piece has many similarities to the free improvs of Keith Jarrett, and I'm not the only one who thinks this fugue is the invention of Jazz. BTW, the intro is something modern pianists will NEVER understand because they have no idea what it is to play this piece on a c.1815 Viennese grand. They try to make it into some mysterious statement about who knows what. But if you know the instruments he had at hand, and also know what an absolute monster of a piece this was for them, you realize that in the tradition of the unmeasured lute prelude, Beethoven is simply checking out the tuning and the temperament before he starts to play. Hoppy Smith does this to great delight of the audience; he starts what seems to be a prelude, but he's really just improvising, exploring the keys he will need for the piece at hand, then he adjusts the tuning of a string here and there while he is playing, plays a bit more, adjusts another string, and when he is satisfied, he ties it up with a nice neat cadence in the right key, and then begins the piece proper. What's the first thing I do when I arrive to tune such a big 6 1/2 octave Wiener before a concert? I check the octaves, just like Beethoven. That's the primary concern with these beasts, because the upper and lower halves of the instrument drift out of tune in opposite directions (due to the wooden frame), and if you don't know the lay of the land before you start, you're in for unpleasant surprises in the form of two or three tunings. If the octaves are more or less OK, I check the temperament by playing various thirds and noodling a bit, just like Beethoven. After tuning, I bang around a bit to make sure it will stay, again checking octaves and thirds... just like Beethoven. When I'm sure the instrument is well-tuned and stable, I put my tools away and leave. Beethoven, on the other hand, says, "Ok, pre-flight inspection passed, all systems normal, cleared for take-off, fasten your seat-belts and hold on to your hats 'cause there's gonna be turbulence like you ain't never felt before! Here we goooooooooOOOOOOOOOO!!"

RE: testing the theory again. I would posit that the best way to do an objective test as to whether or not temperament makes a perceivable difference, use a high-quality piano synth, either software (like Native Instruments' various packages) or a good electronic instrument, and drive it with a good MIDI performance. This allows you to isolate the temperament alone; no differences due to acoustics or the playing.

Finally, metaphors for UT vs. ET. I have always felt it is like the difference between black-and-white and colors movies. In classes for music students, I always use the wonderful moment from the Wizard of Oz, starting from where the tornado is approaching and Dorothy is trying to get home, and then the house gets sucked up into the tornado, that wonderful bit of 1930's special affects where she is looking out the window at all the things and creatures that have been sucked-up as well, including Miss Gulch who morphs into the Wicked Witch, all in B/W, and after the house falls, she opens the door on Oz and suddenly everything is in breathtaking beautiful color. When you hear meantone for the first time, you definitely know you're not in Kansas anymore!

Now, THAT'S a good metaphor for ET: Kansas!

This has been a very interesting thread, to which I have unfortunately not been able to contribute as much as I would have liked (moving shop plus a nearly-full time teaching load). A few quick comments:

I've been tuning harpsichords, clavichords and small organs for about 35 years, and pianos up to 1840 or so, mostly Viennese, both originals and copies, but I've done several Broadwoods and a number of French instruments, including the new copy of the 1802 Erard (like Beethoven's) for the Paris museum which came out of Chris Clarke's workshop (I was a member of the 3-man construction team, and belive me, an instrument like this needs 3 people!). I have never tuned any UT closer to ET than the Neidhardt and Sorge temperaments, and I tune ET fairly regularly.

I would say that there is something intangible about an quasi-ET UT temperament, something which makes it less monotonous than ET. How close you can apporach ET without losing this, I wouldn't venture to say. But Mark Lindley's "Bach" temperament is pretty close, and he has demonstrated that differences are quite readily audible, though subtle. That said, ET is perfect for the literature concieved in it. French Romantic and Impressionistic organ music, for example; all that slippy-slidey chromatiscism demands ET, and when you get to Messean, you realize that playing with color in ET is another ball of wax altogether. In order to understand what that is really about, you have to hear it in a big French cathedral on a big French 19th-century intrument tuned in ET, with French light coming through the windows. Having played a good amount of that literature (Frank, Vierne, Widor, Messean), I can say that I never really understood it until one afternoon when I was killing a few hours between tunings in Nante, I happened to wander into the cathedral when the organist was practicing, and I had just such an experience; suddenly everything fell into place. Awesome!!

RE: testing the theory. It should be obvious that comparing recordings done on different instruments, or even the same instrument in different acoustical conditions, is NOT objective. Let's be honest; we are talking about subtleties here. Perhaps once your ear has become attuned to the differences which UT have to offer, you can hear it across different acoustical conditions, but to simply put such recordings out to the general public and ask which one they prefer proves absolutely nothing. There are simply too many variables to allow us to pin any preference solely on the temperament.

RE: Schubert and temperament. Schubert is perhaps my favorite composer. I can tell you from many years of listening to his music on the pianos for which he wrote, you cannot begin to understand his music until you hear on early 19th-century Viennese instruments. He was indeed an absolute master in creating colors, but he played with the register differences which these instruments have, not so much with temperament, if at all. When I hear Schubert on a modern piano, or an English or French piano of the early 19th-c, all these colors and textures are simply not there. Having heard Schubert in a number of different temperaments from ET to Neidhardt on many different historical instruments (Graf, Streicher, Walter, Fritz, Schantz, Brodmann, etc), I would say that temperament doesn't really matter. The colors from the masterful register play are so strong that subtitles in temperament play second fiddle. That said, once the overall pallet is correct, temperament might add a slight extra element of interest, but it would be very slight, and I have never really noticed any improvement using any historical UT, which in general are more differenetiated than the supposed "Victorian" temperaments. But I repeat: you cannot gain any real insight into Schubert's compositional technique until you hear his music on the proper instrument. Anything else will always be a very distant second.

RE: Beethoven. Opus 106 blows away any and all arguments one might make in favor of UT. It is obviously conceived within an environment of tonality equality. In the 4th movement, tonalities go by like Belgian villages on the Eurostar; blink, and you've missed them. He is constantly morphing across enharmonic divides, flipping multiple sharps into multiple flats at the drop of a hat without giving it a second thought. This piece has many similarities to the free improvs of Keith Jarrett, and I'm not the only one who thinks this fugue is the invention of Jazz. BTW, the intro is something modern pianists will NEVER understand because they have no idea what it is to play this piece on a c.1815 Viennese grand. They try to make it into some mysterious statement about who knows what. But if you know the instruments he had at hand, and also know what an absolute monster of a piece this was for them, you realize that in the tradition of the unmeasured lute prelude, Beethoven is simply checking out the tuning and the temperament before he starts to play. Hoppy Smith does this to great delight of the audience; he starts what seems to be a prelude, but he's really just improvising, exploring the keys he will need for the piece at hand, then he adjusts the tuning of a string here and there while he is playing, plays a bit more, adjusts another string, and when he is satisfied, he ties it up with a nice neat cadence in the right key, and then begins the piece proper. What's the first thing I do when I arrive to tune such a big 6 1/2 octave Wiener before a concert? I check the octaves, just like Beethoven. That's the primary concern with these beasts, because the upper and lower halves of the instrument drift out of tune in opposite directions (due to the wooden frame), and if you don't know the lay of the land before you start, you're in for unpleasant surprises in the form of two or three tunings. If the octaves are more or less OK, I check the temperament by playing various thirds and noodling a bit, just like Beethoven. After tuning, I bang around a bit to make sure it will stay, again checking octaves and thirds... just like Beethoven. When I'm sure the instrument is well-tuned and stable, I put my tools away and leave. Beethoven, on the other hand, says, "Ok, pre-flight inspection passed, all systems normal, cleared for take-off, fasten your seat-belts and hold on to your hats 'cause there's gonna be turbulence like you ain't never felt before! Here we goooooooooOOOOOOOOOO!!"

RE: testing the theory again. I would posit that the best way to do an objective test as to whether or not temperament makes a perceivable difference, use a high-quality piano synth, either software (like Native Instruments' various packages) or a good electronic instrument, and drive it with a good MIDI performance. This allows you to isolate the temperament alone; no differences due to acoustics or the playing.

Finally, metaphors for UT vs. ET. I have always felt it is like the difference between black-and-white and colors movies. In classes for music students, I always use the wonderful moment from the Wizard of Oz, starting from where the tornado is approaching and Dorothy is trying to get home, and then the house gets sucked up into the tornado, that wonderful bit of 1930's special affects where she is looking out the window at all the things and creatures that have been sucked-up as well, including Miss Gulch who morphs into the Wicked Witch, all in B/W, and after the house falls, she opens the door on Oz and suddenly everything is in breathtaking beautiful color. When you hear meantone for the first time, you definitely know you're not in Kansas anymore!

Now, THAT'S a good metaphor for ET: Kansas!