source file: mills2.txt Date: Fri, 22 Sep 1995 02:56:58 -0700 Subject: More from the harpsichord list on Bach's tuning From: COUL@ezh.nl (Manuel Op de Coul) Date: Wed, 20 Sep 1995 07:36:43 -0500 Sender: Harpsichords and Related Topics From: Paul Hahn Subject: Re: Temperaments: request for references On Sat, 16 Sep 1995, mcgeary thomas nelson wrote: > Regarding reading material appropos temperaments, I would strongly > suggest an underrecognized and appreciated article by Rudolph Rasch, > "Does 'Well-Tempered'Mean 'Equal Tempered'?" in "Bach, Handel, > Scarlatti: Tercentenary Essays, ed.by Peter Williams. In a very > careful, meticulous manner Rasch looks at many myths, fictions, > and misconceptions about temperament and Bach. On your suggestion, I found and read this article. It's interesting, but there are a few points that I think he doesn't argue as convincingly as he thinks he does. > some of his points (I'm > recalling from memory) include: there is no reason to associate Werckmeister > III with Bach (W. in fact had other temperaments, including ET); This is true, and a lot of other writers mention ET as well. (But I do find a little questionable when Rasch says "hey, look at all these theorists who recommend ET" when he has obviously just gone through and selected out the (equally) many who don't.) However, ET is really a pretty obvious solution once you begin considering the question of the disposition of the comma. OTOH, the most obvious method isn't always the best one. ET is probably the hardest temperament of all to set accurately by ear. Recall that Bach was reputed to be able to tune his harpsichord in fifteen minutes. I'd like to see anyone who could set a good ET in that time; even the best tuners I've seen take much longer than that. > there is no > justification or rationale for the Barnes-Bach temperament (Barnes' > methodology is subjective, his sample too [small]), Rasch does raise some signficant issues about Barnes' work, but I would note that Barnes says straight out in his own article that the sample is too small to be conclusive statistically. But if we required the level of rigor in musicology that physicists do, I shudder to think how many (few) articles would get published. > that all the contemporary > statements about Bach's tuning practice (for stringed keyboards, of course) > suggest equal temperament. With all respect, the evidence is hardly as conclusive as Rasch would have us believe. There are many possible interpretations even for some of the evidence he cites. Example: he quotes the following passage from Forkel's biography: : Nobody could have any thanks for quilling his harpsichord for him; he : always did it himself. Also the tuning of his harpsichord and : clavichord was his own affair, and he was so practised in this work : that it did not take him more than a quarter of an hour. But then, : when he improvised, all twenty-four keys were his; he could do with : them what he wanted. He connected the most remote keys together as : easily and naturally as the nearest; one could believe he was : modulating only in the inner circle of a single key. He then concludes that the last two sentences indicate that all keys sounded the same in Bach's tuning. However, is it not as plausible that Forkel is praising Bach's skill in improvising smooth modulations? > Two quotes Ihave ready-to-hand: "equal temperament > was becoming the norm for tuning during the second half of the eighteenth > century" Too bad Bach died in 1750, huh? To be fair, Rasch says this in order to argue that if WTK _were_ in fact for an unequal temperament, those later theorists for whom ET was "the norm" would have remarked on the fact. Still, those theorists didn't have any more evidence than we do. > and "equal temperament has been described and discussed so often > in eighteenth-century writings as a practical system that it must have > played an important part in musical performance." See above. Just because it's an obvious theoretical solution doesn't mean it was practical, or that there weren't other factors weighing against it. [snip the rest] --pH (manynote@library.wustl.edu or http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote) O /\ "Foul? What the hell for?" -\-\-- o "Because you are chalking your cue with the 3-ball." ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Sep 1995 10:53:10 -0400 Sender: Harpsichords and Related Topics From: John Sankey Subject: Re: Temperaments: request for references "Bach's keyboard temperament - Internal evidence from the Well-Tempered Clavier", John Barnes, Early Music 7:236-49 (1979) shows that the distribution of intervals even in the 48 is nowhere near ET - it matches Werckmeister III better than any other historical temperament. Bill Sethares & I have submitted a paper to the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America with an analysis of the temperament of Domenico Scarlatti, but it hasn't got through the review stage yet. -- John Sankey bf250@freenet.carleton.ca Music is Beauty, Beauty is Truth, Truth is Freedom