source file: mills3.txt Date: Sun, 7 Dec 1997 23:09:53 +0100 Subject: lutes and tunings. From: A440A Greetings: Neil writes: > As mentioned, we know Bach loved the Lute, and was known to have >jammed with S.L. Weiss...thus, was Bach >in well temperament, and Weiss in eq? > would it >have been possible for Bach (and other keyboardists of that day) to >have tuned to eq by ear, using the notes of the Lute? I would think it difficult. Try this, from one guitar, tuned as well as possible, tune another guitar by open string unison tuning, one string at a time, and then see if the second guitar sounds as good as the first. Now imagine trying to copy a temperament from a lute to a harpsichord. I tried this once, ( with two Martin D-18's, the tuning didn't make it from one to the other intact). It appears from Jorgensen that temperament transfer like this was attempted, and was found to be a crude way of temperament. The differences between wire and gut would have made the overtone alignment difficult, perhaps that may have been a reason for the Lautenwerk? I dunno, maybe someone older and smarter can answer this?? I would think the lutist would have tuned to the keyboard tuning, but I know little about lutes, other than they were among the first to benifit from the Mersenne ratios and Napier's logarithms. The moveable frets on them makes me think they were multi-intonation capable, and I would assume a lutist of the time would move one or two of them to match the ensemble of the moment. But I don't know chestnuts from pecans about this........ >In a similar vein, were the instru-mentalists of that time adept at >switching between various systems? If > a flutist, for example, played with a Lutenist, seems eq would be the >system...but, would they be using well or meantone with others, such >as keyboard players? Was there a ET flute in the 1700's? I thought that was more of an early to mid 1800's development. Keyboard tuning was considered to suffer the "imperfection of the instrument", and I would think it would determine the keys that the other instruments would tune for. I can't claim expertise on other instruments history through this era, but if we could get Maclaren back in here, I bet we would all hear a lot about this. Others?? Regards, Ed Foote SMTPOriginator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu From: Paul Rapoport Subject: useless temperaments PostedDate: 08-12-97 00:19:27 SendTo: CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH ReplyTo: tuning@eartha.mills.edu $MessageStorage: 0 $UpdatedBy: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=coul1358/OU=AT/O=EZH,CN=Manuel op de Coul/OU=AT/O=EZH RouteServers: CN=notesrv2/OU=Server/O=EZH,CN=notesrv1/OU=Server/O=EZH RouteTimes: 08-12-97 00:17:35-08-12-97 00:17:36,08-12-97 00:17:25-08-12-97 00:17:25 DeliveredDate: 08-12-97 00:17:25 Categories: $Revisions: Received: from ns.ezh.nl ([137.174.112.59]) by notesrv2.ezh.nl (Lotus SMTP MTA SMTP v4.6 (462.2 9-3-1997)) with SMTP id C1256566.007FF23F; Mon, 8 Dec 1997 00:17:31 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA09000; Mon, 8 Dec 1997 00:19:27 +0100 Date: Mon, 8 Dec 1997 00:19:27 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA08999 Received: (qmail 26378 invoked from network); 7 Dec 1997 15:19:23 -0800 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 7 Dec 1997 15:19:23 -0800 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu