Pianotech

  • 1.  Unequal Temperaments - Zoom Invitation

    Posted 01-18-2024 15:46

      Open Zoom Invitation Saturday January 20th

      

    Understanding the Heresy

    -Unequal Temperaments in a Modern World
    Music has been composed in Equal Temperament since the 1500's.
    Why did so many composers continue to use other temperaments?
    David Pinnegar of Hammerwood Park, England will demonstrate for us his process of tuning in an Unequal Temperament.
    Pianist Adolfo Barabino will perform a selection of pieces from those time periods as it was originally heard by the composer.
    Saturday January 20th
    12:30 PM PST
    3:30 PM EST
    8:30 PM GMT
    Meeting ID: 811 6750 6225
    Passcode: 440523
    https://www.hammerwoodpark.co.uk/
    Hammerwood Park Pianos
    1869 Broadwood cottage Grand
    1802 Stodart Grand 
    1854 pipe organ tuned in meantone. 
    Adolfo Barbino



    ------------------------------
    Gannon Rhinehart
    Santa Fe NM
    (505) 692-8385
    ------------------------------



  • 2.  RE: Unequal Temperaments - Zoom Invitation

    Posted 01-22-2024 08:08
    Perhaps worthy of a thread in itself but hope the following followup on the Zoom might be helpful . . . and I hope that people might enjoy the recordings of unexpected repertoire.

    The Zoom gathering organised by Gannon Rhinehart was very interesting and illuminating discussions flowed led by Dr Willis Miller, Peter Gray and Jake Felipe and during which certain industry-held assumptions surfaced. With access to my corpus of recordings going back to 2008 all are answered. Without doubt Beethoven was composing for unequal temperament but his work is rarely performed with such. Research by Willis Miller indicates likewise with regard to Chopin. So what happens when we look at repertoire after that? - For general demonstration
    https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_3z6lLXhDiG-nBNFbAO_Yd2hqo-DcXI6 is the 24 Chopin Preludes - demonstrating the fallacy that unequal temperament requires retuning of the instrument for different keys. No - the composer went to each key for the effect that he was exploiting.
    - Because we don't need to retune our instrument to different unequal temperaments tuning the acoustic piano to a good general purpose unequal temperament does not encourage resort to digital pianos for access to lots of different temperaments. Pianoteq however is a useful research tool and from which one finds similar effects coming out of the genre of useful temperaments varying rather more in degree rather than effect.
    - F minor and C minor are the litmus test as to whether a temperament does what it's meant to do musically
    - Resonance - because UT can be tuned resonantly it enables original pedalling of Chopin to be restored https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bsw2P4w4Bk. Resonance of the instrument is palpable in https://youtu.be/xh0iLiUZfbw?t=188 (sadly tuning slipping on account of inadequate preparation time allowed.) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQZTd-mWDek where unequal temperament was 6dB louder measured by the recording engineer
    - With orchestra - total harmony of piano and orchestra can be achieved https://youtu.be/_52SJEgY2YU and resonance enabled a Yamaha C6 to hold its own with orchestra normally requiring a C7
    - Orchestral concertos rarely break the bounds of three sharps or flats - and accordingly the better than equal thirds can more closely accord with the orchestral players who are finding nearer just intonation between and amongst themselves so an unequal temperament is better
    - With the perfect fifth based series of temperaments we're progressing from nearer meantone purity in the home keys to nearer pythagorean purity in the remote keys
    - Many people have found Young temperament to achieve good results but I cannot hear Vallotti in performance. For this reason I move to a preference for 7 perfect fifths in Kellner, which can be subliminal to an audience - or Kirnberger III which can err more towards Meantone effects.
    - Charles Burney complained that people were starting not to be able to distinguish between a major and minor semitone and that not making that distinction was for beginners. Our music since adoption of ET so that people could play Chopsticks in a showroom without thinking the piano was bad has been left in the realm of the kindergarten.
    - Suitability of a Kellner-like temperament beyond the bounds of conventionally-held Unequal Temperament territory -
    -- Scriabin https://youtu.be/KSvE3gIIkHc in B minor
    ---- https://youtu.be/hljt_axFHF0 (Sadly poor recording)
    So contrary to the assertion that were Steinway to adopt anything other than ET they'd need 6 or 7 instruments for every concert . . . and intruments would need to be retuned for different repertoire . . . long experience and the corpus of the unequal temperament recordings demonstrate objections to be wholly fallacious.
    UT isn't appropriately written about - it has to be listened to.

    --
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    David Pinnegar, B.Sc., A.R.C.S.
    - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
    +44 1342 850594



    Original Message