source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 07:26:32 -0800 Subject: Major tonic endings From: Daniel Wolf Paul Erlich wrote: >>'' Pieces in minor tended to end with a Picardy (major tonic) chord in the >>days >>when the minor triad was tuned 10:12:15.'' I asked: >Can you identify ''those days'' with any exactitude? He responded: ''No, there is no single set of dates. I would say Renaissance through Middle Baroque. Well-temperaments brought the 16:19:24 tuning into currency in the Late Baroque period. Please don't make this into another black-and-white issue, I'm trying to explain tendencies, not impose rules. Having played in these tunings during the 20th century, I can't give experimental proof that my own tendencies in this regard are similar to historical ones indepentenly of having grown up bombarded with classical music on the radio (which included some authentically-tuned performances of Renaissance music). But I feel them strongly.'' The problem is that the ''Renaissance to Middle Baroque'' - I assume you intend a period between the last days of Pythagoreanism and the advent of well temperaments - is a time period where different intonations were in use simultaneously, depending largely upon instrumental resources and whether voices were accompanied or not. The reasonable rule of thumb has been that fretted strings approximated equal temperament (Vincentino 1555), keyboards used some form of meantone, and voices, unfretted strings and winds either matched the temperament of continuo instruments or tended towards just intervals. To attribute a harmonic figure like the tonic major ending to intonational practice is problematic in that the figure is present in all instrumental repertoires, without regard to tuning. Even if the figure were to have originated in a just or meantone environment (approximating /6:/5:/4) - and its obiquity in the lute repertoire speaks against this - the adoption into other tuning systems would have meant that the figure was frequently heard without the psychoacoustic effect that you claim. For this reason, I suspect that the figure became established as an affect independent of its precise intonation - and one whose archaicizing quality was already well established in the late meantone repertoire (hence Rousseau's label identifying the figure with gothic Picardie). Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 2 Mar 1997 16:56 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA01972; Sun, 2 Mar 1997 16:56:53 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA01984 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id HAA29782; Sun, 2 Mar 1997 07:54:59 -0800 Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 07:54:59 -0800 Message-Id: <199703021052_MC2-11F3-649D@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu