source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 02:09:28 -0800 Subject: Re: Mozart and ET?? From: kollos@cavehill.dnet.co.uk (Jonathan Walker) Ed Foote (A440A@aol.com) wrote: > Interesting viewpoint concerning the evolution of ET, however, > after reading the McGeary article, I remain unconvinced of your > main points and dates. This follows from several reasonings. I should probably mention that I have no vested interest in promoting well-tempered systems over ET for music of this period (nor vice versa), so I'll accept whatever arguments seem most convincing for the dating of ET's emergence as a universally employed keyboard temperament. (Since I haven't carried out any independent research in this area, I'd prefer if someone else took over the discussion.) > I would agree that the Kirnberger II was not so popular. It would > seem that Kirnberger's temperament was touted mainly by his > personal supporters, and their agenda is suspect, (it was not that > smooth of a temperament). To some extent, I believe McGeary > has drawn his sights on a "straw man". Kirnberger II is cruder (in construction and aesthetic effect) than many other well-tempered schemes, so I would certainly agree that the surprising degree of support it seemed to have gained in contemporary treatises is suspect. Your comment about McGeary attacking a straw man isn't quite fair though: McGeary's article is based on a survey of contemporary keyboard treatises and related literature; most of these writers endorse ET as a keyboard standard, but a substantial minority mention Kirberger II. McGeary thus set himself the task of showing how this was not such strong evidence in favour of K II's practical popularity as it might seem -- indeed, far from it. If the treatises McGeary examined had also included a wealth of material on other well-tempered systems, then his focussing on K II would have been an attack on a straw man; but on other well-tempered systems there is a general silence among McGeary's sources, so I can't see that your charge stands. You could of course argue that McGeary's sources might have represented an ET vanguard, and that ordinary musicians (i.e. of the kind which doesn't compile treatises) remained content with the resources of their preferred well-tempered systems. This might well be so, but the trouble is precisely that no written evidence was left by such musicians, so McGeary has all the advantage here. Or do you have any hard, historical evidence to counter his claims? > >From Jorgenson's research, I offer the following quotes from > Johann Joseph Loehr's book,> Uber die Scheibler'sche Erfindung > uberhaupt und dessen Pianoforte-und Orgel-Stimmung insbesondere< > > "There never was a man capable of tuning by a ear a pianoforte or > an organ so as not to leave some inequality of temperament, and > there never will be" and " {Equal Temperament} hitherto has not > been possible....Before Mr. Scheibler's invention no > such means existed by which even a tolerable > equality of temperament could be obtained" [1836] There is a logical problem here, which would seem to undermine its usefulness for your argument: namely, we can always choose a margin of error small enough to wrong-foot the best tuner, and if we set the margin at 0, then of course no-one can tune flawless ET. But then no-one can tune flawlessly according to any given well-tempered system, or any given meantone system, or any tuning system whatsoever. The argument above would thus appear to be quite empty. What you would have to find is not evidence to show that ET was not achieved to perfection, but rather that musicians/tuners were not _aiming_ for the equality of all keys, but continued, rather, to favour some over others. In other words, you will need to find contemporary evidence not for inequality of results, but inequality of _intention_. > Again, according to Jorgenson, in 1850, ( I think), A.J. Hipkins > stated that the best tuners at the Broadwood factory "didn't tune l > anything like equal temperament" Same again (and I'll assume you aren't using documentation of English practices to make any point concerning German practices at this time or earlier). Was it simply that the Broadwood tuners were aiming at, but not achieving equality, or were they deliberately retaining a well-tempered scheme (or schemes)? Random inequalities don't count; the required inequalities would tend towards 1/4-comma meantone at the "white-keys" side of the "circle of fifths", and towards Pythagorean at the other end (you would agree with this, I trust as a fair summary of the general tendencies of well-tempered systems?). > > ... in Germany during the second half of the 18th is because > >piano tuning had largely become a task of professionals by the time > >of theFrench/English changes, whereas many or most players were > >capable of tuning their own pianos at the time the changes occured > >in Germany. Am I right? > > Yes, but that doesn't mean that they were using ET, which is > about the most difficult temperament to tune. There were much easier > ways to tune a non-restrictive temperament. That wasn't my point. I was saying that I thought this was why we should have evidence from professionals in the piano industry concerning the changeover to ET in England and France, whereas our evidence concerning Germany/Austria is less direct, and gives us only a vague idea of dates. This _wasn't_ being offered as an argument to establish the case that the Germans adopted ET earlier -- it was only an auxiliary point. > There is no evidence that there was knowledge of test intervals > in the 1700's. Without the normal tests for interval width, I > would not be able to tune an acceptable ET today, and I have been > tuning ET for the last 20 years at recording and broadcast n > standards. Doesn't the very name *gleichschwebende* suggest how they approached the practicalities of tuning ET? I doubt, of course that they would have achieved anything approaching the "recording and broadcast standards" of the past twenty years, but as I have said, the random inequalities resulting from tuning methods designed to achieve something like ET will not serve your argument; only the intended inequalities of well-temperament will do this. > I don't think ET was possible, given the state of > science in the 1700's. ( Mersenne ratios didn't give much > information that was of any use to piano tuning, did he?) You could make much the same argument for meantone temperaments being impossible in the 15th century, but we have corroborating evidence to show that they did indeed employ such tunings then; the fact that no adequate mathematical description of even 1/4-comma meantone appeared until long after is irrelevant. Likewise, a knowledge of how to extract the twelfth root of 2 (and the persistence to make the burdensome calculations) didn't bother lute and viol players during the following century: they were quite happy to use rational approximations such as 18/17 for ET semitones, and relied upon natural margins of error, and a little fudging to make (18/17)^12 arrive at 2/1. Something like ET was thus being practiced centuries earlier than the time we are talking about (late 18th/early 19th centuries); the reason why it wasn't adopted for keyboards at this stage was that unlike lutes and viols, keyboard instruments were capable of tunings which better suited musical needs: first the meantone systems, and then the well-tempered. Even the fretted clavichord offered better tuning possibilities than lutes or viols. > > Beethoven's well-known pronouncements on key > > characteristics should not be taken to imply that he preferred > >some variety of well-temperament, because he is also on record as > >claiming that he could distinguish between C# major and Db major > >(!), which, I need hardly say, is not a distinction that can be > >made in any well-temperament. > > Hmmmm. Is this a distinction that can be made in ET? I am not sure > by what mechanism this last statement is supposed to support either > direction. I'm afraid you've missed my point entirely. I was saying that the pronouncements Beethoven made, well into his career, upon key characteristics, might seem to indicate his continuing preference for and use of well-temperament (for as long as he could hear any difference). My point was that he also claimed to be able to distinguish between Db and C# (and other such "enharmonic equivalents") and this renders his other statements on key characteristics useless as a supposed Beethovenian endorsement of well-temperament. Of course the distinction can't be made in ET -- it can't be made on any 12-notes per octave keyboard; this has nothing to do with my point here. Whatever Beethoven's grounds for discerning key characteristics might have been, they were more nebulous than the intervallic patterns produced by well-temperaments (though as I said, I don't doubt that well-temperament would have played a part in suggesting such distinctions, alongside such matters as which keys were most congenial for the various orchestral instruments, etc.). > >I would accept that Beethoven's notions concerning > >key characteristics originated in part from the well-temperament > >that he must have been familiar with in his youth, but if the > >connection between the two had been of great importance to him, we > >should expect him to have made statements on the lamentable erosion > >of key characteristics through the adoption of equal temperament > > This seems to beg the question. If, in fact, there was no ET > actually being tuned, he would have made no statements about the > erosion. I'm not begging any questions because, as I thought I had made clear, I was ASSUMING the consensus position, and contenting myself with making various auxiliary points; I left it to McGeary to argue for the main issue of when ET emerged in Germany/Austria. My discussion of Beethoven was intended to make the point that _whatever was happening tuning-wise in Germany/Austria_, these statements on key characteristics will not serve to establish that Beethoven demanded well-temperament for his pianos. This is a purely negative point: it says nothing either way about which tuning he actually used. > These are all academic points, There is very little hope of > arriving at a definitive answer, However, There is another > compelling reason to doubt that Mozart and Beethoven composed their > keyboard work on equally tempered pianos. > To investigate their music, one should play it in ET and well > temperament, side by side, and compare. I am presently working > with several artists that are intimately familiar with this music. > When I introduced them to Well temperament, the one common response > I got from them is that the music of the classical Germans makes a > lot more sense when played in well temperament. Look, lest we start arguing at cross-purposes, I think I should point out that there are, as far as I'm concerned, two separate issues here. 1. The first is the factual matter of what temperaments were actually used at different times and places; insofar as we can arrive at any conclusions on this, it will be on the basis of documentary sources. On this issue, I am at present prepared to accept the view that ET had become entrenched as a keyboard tuning in Germany/Austria by about 1800. If I ever encounter more powerful arguments to the contrary -- again based on documentary evidence -- I shall change my views; but to date I have not seen any such arguments. This has nothing to do with any blind pro-ET bigotry; for instance, I do not doubt that, for example, the "48" were intended for well-temperament and not for equal temperament; because the evidence (including the title WTK!) clinches the issue, I can afford to dismiss anyone who thinks otherwise as simply ignorant of the relevant facts. 2. The second issue is that of our aesthetic preferences _today_ for one tuning system over another for a given repertory. I am very glad to hear of your work concerning the promotion of well-tempered systems among professional pianists, and I wish you every success. However, the fact that someone today, like yourself, is prepared to state a preference for well-tempered Mozart or Beethoven neither establishes any historical case, nor does such a preference require any historical evidence to justify it. There are all sorts of ways we can devise to refresh our perceptions of familiar repertoire -- and a change of tuning is as good as any. Many of the performance practices labelled as authentic have no historical basis; but this doesn't mean we should abandon them (they may have succeeded in reawakening us to over-familiar pieces) -- only that we should abandon the spurious historical arguments we used to justify these performance practices. Say we were to discover (not that I expect it) irrefutable evidence that Beethoven (for as long as his hearing lasted) never encountered a single well-tempered piano after 1800. What then? Should this stop us from experimenting with well-temperaments in performances of his post-1800 sonatas? Not in the least! If pianists need their confidence bolstered by foundationless arguments, concerning the tunings Beethoven would have heard, before they are prepared to try out a well-tempered tuning, then I regret this. The only argument that should be needed is that Beethoven would certainly have played on well-tempered instruments at least in his youth, and that they are certainly not blatantly inappropriate to his sonatas of the 1800s in the way that, say, pelog and slendro tunings would. The performance of the sonatas today in well-temperaments ought not to be made conditional upon any historical proof that they actually _were_ ever performed in well-temperaments; In any case, Beethoven would have been used to hearing a variety of tunings: well-temperament and ET on pianos, also probably 1/6-comma meantone on organs; various efforts on strings running from quasi-Pythagorean to 1/6-comma meantone, depending on the preferences and proficiency of the players ... by the time we come to aging cimbalom players in taverns, we should be able to accept that Beethoven could not have fastened his designs upon any single tuning. What of arrangements, such as that of the op.14/1 piano sonata for string quartet? Would anyone suggest that Beethoven must have required the quartet players to switch to well-temperament or ET? In any case, orchestras are a graveyard for fine tuning sensibilities, and all the more so in Beethoven's time. The musician in Beethoven's time could be expected to display a tolerance for a variety of tuning systems, reproduced with varying degrees of accuracy. Play Beethoven in a well-temperament if you wish, but more importantly, play him well. > I prefer the Young or Prinz temperaments for the modern pianos, as > the greatly increased overtones renders many of the other well temps > to be harsh when more than three accidentals are involved. Barbour says that Young's account of his No.1 includes a miscalculation of Eb, which should form a true 4/3 with G#; do you incorporate this correction? > ... presently in the works is > a CD of historical tunings on the modern concert grand. The record > company has requested that I not divulge exactly what, yet, but this > list will be the first place I will notify when given the go-ahead. Ah, now this is interesting -- historical tunings divorced from historical instruments. A welcome development, as far as I'm concerned. I'm looking forward to seeing further details. Good luck with the project. -- Jonathan Walker Queen's University Belfast mailto:kollos@cavehill.dnet.co.uk http://www.music.qub.ac.uk/~walker/ Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Sun, 2 Mar 1997 16:30 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA01828; Sun, 2 Mar 1997 16:30:00 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA01908 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id HAA29462; Sun, 2 Mar 1997 07:26:32 -0800 Date: Sun, 2 Mar 1997 07:26:32 -0800 Message-Id: <199703021025_MC2-11F3-A3B2@compuserve.com> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu