source file: mills2.txt
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 20:00:31 +0200

Subject: Re: Historical temperaments

From: alves@orion.ac.hmc.edu (Bill Alves)

Gary Morrison wrote:
>''   But Mozart wrote lots of piano music, and even by that early a time
>pianos were mostly 12TET, right?''

Daniel Wolf responded:
>Broadwood claimed - and this must be taken as hyperbole - that 12TET was
>standard practice only in 1811. At that time Mozart had been dead almost
>twenty years. The most generally accepted date for 12tet as common practi>ce
>for piano tuning is about 1844.

But Gary's point is well taken, even if Mozart wasn't using equal
temperament. It's one thing to point out the lack of chromaticism Mozart's
music with winds and perhaps organ, and quite another to extrapolate that
conservatism into a tuning preference on the piano. The use of unvalved
brass in the lower harmonics will naturally restrict key choices, for
example, your interesting data on occassional stopped horn pitches
notwithstanding.

If this supposed prevalance of meantone tuning is to be applied to the
piano, then how are we to account for Mozart's occassional, but no less
significant, excursions into chromaticism in solo piano works, such as the
famous C minor fantasy? There are other possibilities besides equal
temperament, including the various well temperaments and circulating
temperaments, but I can't see how such a piece could work in meantone, if
that's what you're proposing.

Now, I think it's possible that meantone continued to be used by some
tuners all the way into the 20th century. It's easy to tune, and most music
played by amateurs and provincial churches did not demand the use of many
keys and chromaticism. But I think it's equally likely that professionals
used a variety of circulating and well temperaments as well as equal
temperament at the same time.

It would be interesting to know when piano tuning became a profession
separate from that of the instrument builder and musician like it is today.
It's easy to imagine that the institutionalization of the occupation could
help lead to a standardization of equal temperament. Brian McLaren and Lou
Harrison have blamed this standardization on the industrialization of piano
manufacturing, but, while it's possible that would explain the factory
tuning, I don't see why it would explain why it was tuned that way
thereafter.

Bill

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^ Bill Alves                                      email: alves@hmc.edu ^
^ Harvey Mudd College                 URL: http://www2.hmc.edu/~alves/ ^
^ 301 E. Twelfth St.                            (909)607-4170 (office) ^
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