EVBT is interesting and I have tried it but find focus on beating distracting in the course of playing.
Pianos sounding better in non-ET? A long time ago I constructed a spreadsheet as a tool for measuring the extent of concordance of harmonics with scale notes, the extent of confusion, and possible extent of separation so non-interference of harmonics and notes. The spreadsheet is untidy - I grew up before spreadsheets so it's particularly inelegant - but it could be useful to others.
On Sheet 1, column 2 put in the offsets of any temperament. At E2 insert the name of the temperament. In column "I" we find the proportion of the same frequencies within +-0.5Hz which is a measure of total resonance which can be expected, then the total which are within 1/2 to 1 beat, 1 to 5 beats and 2 to 5 beats. Of course other measures could be chosen.
Consistently among temperaments ET comes out with the lowest consistency of harmonics to scale notes, the higher end of 1 beat, the higher end of 1 to 5 beats and lower of 2 to 5 beats. This demonstrates a low comparative quality of harmonic accordance, a higher audible confusion of near frequencies and a dirty frequency spectrum of confusing vibrations. Unequal temperaments can focus the frequencies onto scale notes and separate the non-according frequencies away from the scale notes so that they don't resonate, giving a cleaner sound.
The result therefore is that instead of having one key transposed up semitones, we have keys which enable contrasts of clean vs dirty, locked vs unlocked, certain vs uncertain, skating on ice for instance, and the effect is demonstrable not only audibly but mathematically as here.
Attached are some screenshots which may not be visible on email and might require logging into the thread on PTG and together with the spreadsheet. If anyone is interested in tidying up the spreadsheet I won't be offended!
By the way, today I found a couple of recordings which might be enjoyable
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8gJqrVVpdg - a piece by Albeniz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1a5qsTdqc4 - Saint Saens demonstrating accordance of the piano with accompanying instruments.
Greetings and best wishes,
David P
------------------------------
David Pinnegar BSc ARCS
Hammerwood Park, East Grinstead, Sussex, UK
+44 1342 850594
"High Definition" Tuning
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 11-28-2023 12:40
From: Peter Grey
Subject: Journal Nov 23 Article - Book Review revisiting Duffin "Why ET ruined Harmony"
Larry,
IIRC it was Steve Fairchild that did this abd he called it "altered equal". Unfortunately after some time he was accused of lifting a Valotti temperament and calling it his own. OTOH though, it could have simply been that he and Valotti came to very similar conclusions completely separately but in an effort to make things sound better. Whether he knew it beforehand or not was never established that I recall.
At any rate, all WT share the same goal of improving the simpler keys while adding "spice" to the more "challenging" keys. At least that is how I've observed it.
I too am a strong proponent of EBVT. It is a well constructed WT in a mild-mannered way. When executed well, the piano seems to sound better overall I think.
Peter Grey Piano Doctor
------------------------------
Peter Grey
Stratham NH
(603) 686-2395
pianodoctor57@gmail.com
Original Message:
Sent: 11-28-2023 08:40
From: Larry Messerly
Subject: Journal Nov 23 Article - Book Review revisiting Duffin "Why ET ruined Harmony"
I believe that Steve Jellen 1977 Gold Hammer Award, developed a temperament for beginning players making the home keys more harmonius. Unfortunately I can't find it.
------------------------------
Larry Messerly, RPT
Bringing Harmony to Homes
www.lacrossepianotuning.com
ljmesserly@gmail.com
928-899-7292
Original Message:
Sent: 11-28-2023 08:12
From: David Pinnegar
Subject: Journal Nov 23 Article - Book Review revisiting Duffin "Why ET ruined Harmony"
We see in this thread elements both of mild support for the direction that I've been leading in recent years as well as forces of stagnation.
The result is an inertia in the professional world.
Because Steinway as the leading providers of instruments for academic resources and concert halls and their technicians, and those who manage such venues who are perfectly satisfied with their Steinway technicians, who of course with the brand are assumed to be "must be the best" will not embrace or permit any alternative tuning of instruments in their curatorship, music, its experience and musicological research is in stagnation and stasis.
For some time I've been asked to write a book and I've refused until with a good pianist I've recorded and with them demonstrated
Bach 48 in unequal temperaments
Chopin 24 better than recorded before
Debussy 24 and
Schostakovich 24
and worked with musicians familiar with the Schubert Lieder to examine connexions between music, keys, chords and lyrics.
There exist sprigs of green shoots which indicate that this is a fertile ground for research and performance, but the sheer inertia experienced by musicians in the piano and piano technician world is a horrible obstacle. An example of these indications is for instance
which I drew to the attention of a London based Schubert expert who upon finding that the research wasn't done by anyone he knew was nothing short of rude in response.
At every stage where individuals demonstrate fertile ground, in the 1980s, in the 1990s with Ed Foote and Enid Katahn, around 2010 with the Schubert research and Kirnberger referenced below and Eben Goresko demonstrating at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, inertia of the professional world pours weedkiller on the emerging plants. Instruments and technicians able to tune appropriately simply aren't available and Conservatoires see no need to import such.
The Journal has a part to play. In researching an article the other day I came across a reference by an esteemed member examining whether CPE Bach might have followed Mersenne or Kirnberger in tuning practice and of course with Equal Temperament prejudice dismissing Kirnberger risibly. The assertion is demonstrated to be fallacial by the 2011 research of Ruiz in Barcelona
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/13314498.pdfFor those who might think that aspects of unequal temperaments don't sound nice - in relevant keys they were not meant to. Dissonance was just as much part of the music as concordance and modern piano tuning simply drives a bulldozer through all hills and dales, knocking over landmarks in the narrative of a classical composition to leave merely the some rubble and the stumps, rather akin to the remains of Palmyra.
Until it's easier for musicians to explore and to perform and record in unequal temperaments, music from the piano will continue to lose relevance in the modern world.
Best wishes
David P
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.
This morning I've found the measurements that I did on the tuning bars of an 1896 Pleyel Chromatic Harp,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2sFDSRYeIw rather definitive evidence as to whether in the late 19th century Equal Temperament as currently tuned was the tuning used then.
The offsets are:
| 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
-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -David Pinnegar, B.Sc., A.R.C.S.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -+44 1342 850594
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
David Pinnegar, B.Sc., A.R.C.S.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
+44 1342 850594
Original Message:
Sent: 11/20/2023 6:33:00 AM
From: David Pinnegar
Subject: Journal Nov 23 Article - Book Review revisiting Duffin "Why ET ruined Harmony"
Dear Friends
It was a pleasure but a disappointment to read the article in this month's Journal. I'll be responding in kind in the form of a letter to the Editor but as writing about music is like dancing about architecture it's appropriate to include online some links with which people can make up their own minds more objectively. Equal temperament was certainly alive and well before William Braid's method in 1917 as I have a Chromatic Pleyel Harp with tuning bars in its head which produce perfect ET other than one note which might be one or two cents out made in 1896 and Victorian "american organs" were well tuned in ET. However the author concludes and contrary to volumes of academic research that Bach was writing for and tuning ET. For anyone wishing to doubt objection to such a conclusion the book by Johnny Reinhard "Bach and Tuning" is detailed, cogent and in depth.
The author then goes on to quote Fred Sturm "Clearly a strong case can be made for equal temperament as the likely tuning for Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven and even possibly for Bach". Oh dear.
In England Haydn was a close friend of Christian Ignatius Latrobe who wrote songs in which Meantone Temperament was used to position emotive words on emotive chords, entirely lost by equal temperament.
Mozart wrote his Fantasias for Mechanical Clock in F minor, the key of the grave. This was deliberate as the fantasias were written to provide the context for a coffin. In equal temperament this cannot be heard but if Schubart is correct in 1810, not as a matter of wild imagination but actually describing what was audible, Musical Key Characteristics then both the author of the article and the esteemed authority he quotes are flawed.
Below is a catalogue of unequal temperament recordings and from which perhaps people might have opinions as to whether unequal temperament died with Bach, Haydn and Mozart.
Sales of pianos have apparently declined 95% in the USA. If the industry wants to continue that trajectory then please do stick in the Equal Temperament rut into which professional sheep in the Journal have fallen on a road leading only to . . . .
Best wishes
David P
Bach https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JF3YzTG7lU
Bach and Rameau
https://youtu.be/EU24yk3kmnM
Mozart
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARdtdgJxezQ and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebKP9MiGyiI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh485E_NZeQ is Haydn and Mozart
Fantasia in C minor in meantone - sorry electronic piano - All
languishing of the love-sick soul
Most importantly in meantone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFKlNDddWlA Mozart Sonata K280 which
is about being alive in the first movement, and in the second being
buried in the grave ceremoniously in Masonic tradition and the last
movement coming to life again
Mozart and Saint Saens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKbq54Zf-OU
Mozart Beethoven Schumann
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq9sb4t3N6o
Beethoven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjPDefnPQNU
Beethoven and Chopin
https://youtu.be/xwh4Xb1waC0
Chopin Scherzos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rvqQ3K26oE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LCbX4zMMAo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD2tS6ccEog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW-7LGr-j00
Chopin Ballades
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxiphZ7fGQ0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCESQbPHB3I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NirRLq7k4ls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJT5Q6HooyA
Chopin Barcarolle, Debussy and Mozart
https://youtu.be/AHAZjcPmtrs?t=717
Chopin and Liszt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yffLniiZAoc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj0ruBDawck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm5E4h9cGJ8
Chopin Nocturne
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bsw2P4w4Bk
Testing a historic piano
https://youtu.be/tuwylPz_Gcg
Ravel
https://youtu.be/KHwLSebpvE8
Haydn Chopin Mendelssohn Scriabin
https://youtu.be/p4NpeoNpDOA
Schumann Haydn Scarlatti Beethoven
https://youtu.be/rfqhL7UaB3Y
Brahms
https://youtu.be/RXymuml03pE?t=1339
Schumann and Liszt
https://youtu.be/wV3jOOt66kY?t=2606
24 Keys https://youtu.be/7wcwd7PDuLw
------------------------------
David Pinnegar BSc ARCS
Hammerwood Park, East Grinstead, Sussex, UK
+44 1342 850594
"High Definition" Tuning
------------------------------