Many apologies to all for apparently ignoring the thread that I kicked off - Gmail has the unfortunate habit of trashing Pianotech messages which then I only discover when checking the relevant folder. :-(
The trouble with Duffin is not really the thrust of the assertion that he makes but in choosing the Lehman "Bach" tuning which was based upon an upside down interpretation of Bach's squiggle, he fails to appreciate what the unequal tuning was intended to do. Isaacoff is equally disappointing in making every exploration into the authenticity of unequal temperaments but then settles for ET.
| A | 0 |
| Bb | 0.3 |
| B | 1.64 |
| C | -2.1 |
| C# | -0.4 |
| D | 0.4 |
| Eb | 2.2 |
| E | 0.9 |
| F | 0.3 |
| F# | -1.5 |
| G | 2.4 |
| Ab | 1.3 |
| A | 0 |
| Bb | 0.3 |
| B | 1.64 |
| |
This measured evidence rather disproves Fred Sturm's assertions over the years and rather supports the William Braid White watershed of 1917. The assertion repeated in the article that "a strong case can be made for equal temperament for Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven and possibly for Bach" is contrary to numerous lines of distinguished scholarship and of which the book "Bach and Tuning" by Johnny Reinhard is possibly the most accessible. This somewhat skews the conclusions in the article on Page 28 of the magazine.
With respect to Bach here's an observation of someone working on the Aria of the Goldberg Variations:
"Suddenly, after maybe 30 minutes, as the first few measures of the bass theme started to come together, I started to hear the harmonics very clearly in certain notes. It's a phenomena that I had never picked out before your visit, obviously because it was not present in the prior tuning.
Hearing the harmonics immediately encourages you to search them out on the keyboard, to marry and bolster them with truely sympathetic tones. It's a quite astonishing thing.
It also leads to a greater appreciation of what someone like Bach was doing when writing using this temperament. The interplay of just a couple of disonant notes leading to something more consonant has a more profound feel now.
Thank you, I think that this tuning is going to open something quite special."
"
amazing thank you so much for demonstrating proper tuning. I love learning about tunings and different approaches to them. The emotion can live and be demonstrated properly with even a fundamental understanding." and "
Wow, as someone with perfect pitch i expected this to sound out of tune. I was pleasantly surprised! It sounds really natural!" and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSvE3gIIkHc "
Blowing out of the water the crap that more tonally adventurous music can't be played on an unequally tuned instrument."
So why choose Kellner? Well you can choose any tuning you like and the broad spectrum of historic tunings had largely common features. Home keys without accidentals which you used often and felt at home with would sound nice and you went to keys with lots of black notes, "remote" keys, for special effects. This gave composers and musicians specific microtonal control over the effect of their music with 24 choices, 12 major and 12 minor, in which to express and convey what they were intending rather than merely one key, one tonality, shifted up and down by semitones. During the period of the piano from Christofori to Steinway, Schubart's documented description of key characteristics seems to fit much of the repertoire - wonderfully of course Chopin's Bb Minor Funeral March - in which according to Schubart Suicide resides . . . .
To the advocates of the supremacy of ET please do try to find a means of conveying suicide, deepest darkest grief, or putrefaction and death. Likewise on the other side of the spectrum, calmness and pure innocence. The latter requires pure intervals, calm and sweet. The ET thirds don't do that. Their subharmonics, their beat frequencies, are 1/4 tone sharp two octaves down - and yes they can be heard. Throw some pure 3rds into the tuning and suddenly the resultant beat note is in tune and supports that bass line two octaves down, and the harmonics of the bass support the 5th harmonic above. It's a sweet and rich experience.
Different historical temperaments have different mixes of pepper and honey, some more than others. Provided C C# is narrow - so either C sharpened a little or C#/Db lowered a little, likewise F F# and A Ab giving wide DbFs, F#Bbs and AbCs with purer CEs, GBs, and FAs, with narrow FAbs and CEbs then the tuning, of whatever specific formula, will tend towards Schubart's documented characteristics.
1/4 comma meantone certainly gives the crunch and is important for musicological research. Werkmeister III certainly gives a crunch but can excruciate. Both these distribute their commas between four thirds or four fifths.
Coming then to 6th comma tuning, I've found Vallotti and Young to be indistinguishable in performance from ET. I just can't hear it, and was embarrassingly caught out in a concert where Vallotti was used and I complained of the ills of ET.
So this leaves variations on the 5th comma tunings in the middle ground. When tuning pianos there's a double trick to getting them to sound reliably good - and that's been the subject of a dozen years of research and subsequent years of perfecting - but tuning Kellner or Kirnberger III is a start from which others can experiment.
In my long experiments I've found that the fifth comma solutions can be enough to hear, enough to make a difference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dCQyD57e9M even here where Meantone would be even more appropriate, but not so as to cause excruciation. However, possibly becoming inoculated to Korma Kellner I'm seeking the stronger Rogan Josh or Balti of Kirneberger III without venturing towards the Vindaloo.
95% decline in piano sales - please forgive me having forgotten the source of this statistic but we all know that the industry has been in decline. With increasing spread of world populations, whilst ET and Euro-American influence has been spreading such tuning holds little meaning for those whose music us tuned to the Shrutis and the purity of 5 limit just intonation can be just wonderful. The piano in ET cannot enter that soundscape but unequal temperaments can bring a hint of such dimensions to the sound.
I'd like Steinway to be able to adopt the twisted Kellner on concert platforms in my belief that it both enhances the experience of the music and enhances the resonance of the instrument, making the instrument sound better.
So please forgive me in my expression referring to "professional sheep" I hope that esteemed members here might please forgive me for an expression of frustration with inertia within the industry to to make change but to permit change. In London and elsewhere, it's so incredibly difficult for performers who want to use unequal temperament in concerts to be enabled to do so.
Who are the losers? The audience in their experience and lack of "WOW!" that an unequal temperament performance can bring. And as a result of the audience being the losers, and they being the buyers, who are the losers? The manufacturers, he sellers and the technicians. Us.
Best wishes
David P
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David Pinnegar, B.Sc., A.R.C.S.
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+44 1342 850594