source file: mills2.txt
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 01:15:55 +0200

Subject: RE: Comments on the importance of tuning in New Scientist.

From: DFinnamore@aol.com

Gary M. responds to the letter quoted by Charles Lucy:

> >For most of us, the difference between the "cooked" [tempered] and the 
> natural
>  >[just] version is so slight that it becomes lost in the idiosyncracies of
>  >performance.
>  
>     I believe that to be both thoroughly true, and thorougly false in two
>  different ways.  Anybody who has played an indefinite-pitch instrument
>  (e.g., virtually all orchestral instruments) can easily confirm that the
>  pitch-biasing imperfections of these instruments, combined with the time
>  and attention limits of normal-speed music, make it extremely difficult to
>  precisely perform in, for example, 12TET vs. QC meantone, much less the
>  subtle variations of different well temperaments.

I'd like to add, as a reminder of something most of us no doubt have found by
experience, that the "subtle" differences in pitch, though often difficult
for the untrained ear to detect *as pitch differences*, can, and often do,
make a dramatic difference in the timbre of the ensemble (or of the chord in
the case of a single polyphonic instrument).

David

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