source file: mills2.txt
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 1997 09:52:35 -0800

Subject: winding down on ET

From: A440A@aol.com

Greetings all;

 Jonathan Walker responds to my last posting;

> What your are trying to do is label anything with noticeable differences >a
well-temperament -- anyone can win an argument by redefining terms in 
>such a way.

     Hmmmm.  I am a lot less interested in winning an argument than I am in
learning all I can about the history and application of tuning. I would hope
that the nature of these interchanges doesn't become so adversarial as to
limit that.   
   However,  to say that I am trying  to "label anything with noticeable
differences a well-temperament" does something of a disservice to my
intentions.  These well-temperaments were very specific constructions,  I use
my term "Harmonic Toolbox" to describe what they were offering composers.
 This supposes that the levels of tempering were carefully selected, not just
a helter-skelter of missed thirds.  

> Walker asks;
> if ET was well-nigh impossible in the 18th century,  as you 
>argue, how come it was in popular use for lutes and viols during the 
>16th century?  
    The placement of frets, by linear measurement, is a piece of cake
compared to tuning by string tension.  According to Jorgenson,  this was
mentioned by Mersenne, in his Harmonie Universelle, when he states that the
equal division of the octave could not be formed on spinets, as the string
tension had to be judged by ear.   
 
Again Walker writes;
>forgive me if I'm disinclined to 
>accept any far-reaching thesis purely on the grounds that the ears of 
>some (no doubt able) musician have convinced him of its truth. 

    This thesis is not, in all fairness, based purely on the the ears.  The
opinions formed by listening have a substantial amount of historical support,
do they not? I was originally listening to well temperaments with the
skepticism of one who had heard and tuned nothing but ET for many years, but
could find no reasons to disbelieve when I first heard Beethoven played in
the temperaments, ( Schubert too!)

>What of the converse: would you like to say that anyone whose stomach
>doesn't churn at the sound of Beethoven in ET lacks some essentials of 
>musicianship?

    Yes, I would like to say that, but I can't.  Churn is too strong a word.
 What I can say is that after pianists that I work with have become
acquainted with the difference in temperament for Beethoven,  they all prefer
something other than ET.

>Was Chopin (advocate of ET, as I've said before) less than 
>a true musician?
      No, but Chopin was not composing music in the time of Mozart and
Beethoven, I assume he cut his teeth on a lot less meantone than Beethoven,
or Mozart. (For a real treat, listen to his Opus 28 preludes performed on a
DeMorgan temperament. It is a very different music indeed,  and it could have
happened!)

Regards, 
Ed Foote 
Precision Piano Works
Nashville, Tn
 

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