tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post4852358539333133391..comments2024-03-27T23:06:03.736-05:00Comments on The Music Salon: Harmony Revisited, Part 1Bryan Townsendhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-66936072678149160482013-05-02T08:32:23.692-05:002013-05-02T08:32:23.692-05:00Please accept my apologies, Nathaniel! Looking bac...Please accept my apologies, Nathaniel! Looking back over my post I see that I DID mention equal temperament after all. Sorry! I am actually quite familiar with Werckmeister III and other historic tuning as I used to live with a harpsichordist who used historic tunings and I heard her set her temperament about once a week. <br /><br />You are quite right, the various historic tuning systems that preceded equal temperament did not originate with Bach, nor is there any reason to believe that in the Well-Tempered Clavier he was advocating equal temperament. I recall an article in Early Music decades ago in which they did extensive research to determine what temperament the Well-Tempered Clavier was actually intended to use--and it wasn't modern equal temperament!<br /><br />Thanks for the clip! It gives a nice demonstration of those tuning systems. For the whole picture, though, it is a good idea to have an example of mean-tone as well so we can hear how truly awful an untempered A flat chord can be!Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-26286635181644941052013-05-01T20:07:53.756-05:002013-05-01T20:07:53.756-05:00I re-read my post and it comes across a little ter...I re-read my post and it comes across a little terse. My apologies.<br /><br />I was responding to your second paragraph just under the Bach chorale vid. <br /><br />I read and understood that as saying something very similar to a lot other things I've read recently relating to Bach, equal temperament, giving the overall impression that equal temperament is a good tuning system for western, common practice tonal music, it alone solves all the issues that existed with modulation and that it's roots are with Bach.<br /><br />While I appreciate the need for brevity and simplicity in blog posts, as they have a large intended audience, but I feel that paragraph is slightly misleading in that equal temperament was well known before Bach's lifetime but was largely considered undesirable.<br /><br />I also think that the tendency of lumping cyclic and equal temperaments together devalues the large concerted efforts of many composers/theorists of the day to avoid actual 12 tone equal temperament to preserve either as many pure thirds as possible or compromise that for cyclic convenience but try to maintain the differing colours and the 'emotive qualities' the non equal temperaments brought to the expression in tonal music.<br /><br />Regarding your comment, I understand what you say when you talk about different instruments having different resonance frequencies and how they respond the acoustic environment etc but Temperament, though subtle actually can have pretty huge impact in how music sounds. The distance between two semitones are no longer uniform as in equal temperament but you now have semi tones that are wider or narrower which creates different beating for different chords in different keys.<br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8M-JzIwbog<br /><br />I think this clip gives a pretty good demonstration on how the subtle changes in tuning have quite a large impact on the harmony and the piece as a whole. <br /><br />Anyway...I've enjoyed reading your blog over the last few days and there is a lot of interesting material. I only commented here because this association of equal temperament with Bach has become a little bit of a pet peeve as it keeps cropping up.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13680625603206089113noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-47640024729205232952013-05-01T07:08:51.396-05:002013-05-01T07:08:51.396-05:00Thanks for sharing your thoughts on equal or sort-...Thanks for sharing your thoughts on equal or sort-of equal temperaments in tuning. But I fail to see what it has to do with my post which doesn't even mention tuning systems nor does it mention bias towards particular keys.<br /><br />Equal temperament may render all keys largely equivalent on the piano (though the soundboard and case are still going to favour certain resonances), but when you start talking about an orchestra, all the instruments, strings and winds, have different resonances in different keys--and this has nothing to do with temperament but rather with open strings and range.Bryan Townsendhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09482696991279345516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8827040061563065922.post-90433754417958185052013-05-01T02:14:22.133-05:002013-05-01T02:14:22.133-05:00Actually, There are references to equal temperamen...Actually, There are references to equal temperament going all the way back to the start of the 17th Cent but it was usually dismissed as inferior due to the sacrifice of all pure thirds. It seems to have come to the fore in the late 19th early 20th Century, especially with the mass production of instruments.<br /><br />Bach was very involved in tuning and creating his own cyclic temperaments (can play in all 12 keys without re-tuning) which usually are derived from a mean tone tuning system (1/4 comma mean tone contains a wolf interval which was considered unusable) and are not equal. His student Kirnberger also developed a number of temperaments that are cyclic.<br /><br />Bach most likely didn't have equal temperament in mind when he wrote the well tempered clavier but one of these other temperaments which were called wohl temperiert or well temperaments<br /><br />There are a number of other cyclic temperaments that are not equal, Werckmeister, Young, Vallotti, etc that were used throughout the late 18th early 19th centuries and these temperaments maintain a bias towards certain keys as you mention but eliminate the wolf interval. These temperaments are what was in peoples mind when they talk about a particular key having a certain colour or mood. Equal temp. removes this flavour completely - Beethoven used particular keys for particular moods (tempestuous c minor etc) for a reason.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13680625603206089113noreply@blogger.com