The greatest revelation for me was when Dr. Duffin played a piano piece by Schubert in extended sixth-comma meantone, which is not only the tuning system he recommends (and I concur!), but also actually what most of these composers were writing in. It actually sounded GOOD! I am not a big fan of the Romantic era composers, but maybe it is our modern tuning system I object to and not the music itself. After all, Schubert probably never meant for his music to be played in equal temperament. Though many were advocating it at that time, it seems most musicians were still aware of other meantone systems and preferred them well into the early 20th century. It is laziness and convenience that makes us now favor equal temperament. It divides the octave into twelve equal sections, so that G# and Ab are the same note when Ab should be higher than G#. It makes for a simple 88-key piano that is fairly simple to tune... as long as you are willing to tune it out of tune! (Trust me on this - I studied piano tuning for several semesters.) The human ear is more forgiving of the stretching of the minor third for some reason, which explains why, until I discovered music in historical tuning, I only liked minor key music.
An entire discussion of tuning systems and the evils of equal temperament is not possible right now, since I have to go sing in a minute, but it is much like always eating fast food and then trying REAL food for the first time: initially it may seem a little strange, but you quickly realize how much better it is, and then you can never go back. Extended sixth-comma meantone is like gruyere; equal temperament is like Velveeta.
Famous Hat
2 comments:
So if our piano tuner were to tune the piano in the way that you describe, how many keys would it take. I dont remember old pianos or harpsichords being 88 keys, they i think were a lot smaller. I would be very interested in reading the book.
By the way, my BLOG is up, www.jeffinnakari.weebly.com you are mentioned in my first post!
At the time many keyboards were built with split black keys, so that the front of the key would play Ab and the back G#, although there were designs for keyboards with dozens of keys per octave. Most of them were never built, since they would be impractical. However, the split key solution seems easy enough.
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