Greetings,

I was addressing the sameness that 1/4C meantone has in the several simpler keys.

My point is that during Mozart's era, meantone was on the descent and well tempering was on the rise, and the smoothest of the former was very close to the roughest of the latter. Music composed in that era has to be listened to, there are no rules to define the temperament needed. I have yet to see proof of what Mozart used.

The "realm of historical possibilities" is perhaps 10% documented in the literature and if one is making judgments with modern ears it is foolish to restrict oneself to documented possibilities of another era.

The realm I am speaking of is that of temperament's evolution as found by Barbour and Jorgensen and others. They are, of course, not totally complete, but enough so that a genre of tempering that would fall outside of their view may be considered atypical. (I dunno, maybe there are more angels and pins than I thought) Beethoven on a Werckmiester can be a beautiful thing, so era-specific determinations for a temperament are not completely valid.

However, "foolish" is IMHO, an errant description for using the most likely solutions to a problem, first. (Occam is out there shaving.......) If you would like to investigate the best possible tunings for Gershwin, would you begin with 53TET or something that was perhaps what he could have been using? I don't understand the contention that this is foolish at all.

As far as restricting the possibilities, I try not to. I have heard Mozart's music in a variety of tunings, including a very accurate 12TET, which I seriously doubt he was ever able to do.

Regards,
Ed Foote
Precision Piano Works
Nashville, Tn.

------------------------------

Topic No. 3

Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 13:18:22 -0600 (CST)
From: William Sethares
To: Tuning Forum
Subject: subharmonics vs superharmonics
Message-ID: <199811251918.NAA09434@eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu>

Paul H. Erlich wrote:

Partch credits Riemann and many others in preceding his "utonality" concept. The concept has an intersting status around here, with a few giving it little to no importance (e.g., Heinz Bohlen), a few giving it near-equal status with the otonal or "overtone series" concept, such as Daniel Wolf and (implicitly) Bill Sethares, and most of us falling somewhere in between.

I'm not sure I agree with this. In TTSS, I discuss subharmonic series, and argue that if you have a sound whose timbre is defined by a subharmonic series, then its dissonance curve is the same as the dissonance curve for a harmonic sound. In consequence, the set of scale steps that minimize sensory dissonance for a subharmonic sound is the same (the set of JI scale tones) that minimize dissonance for a harmonic sound.

However, there are many physical sources of harmonic sounds, and few sources of subharmonic tones. Hence the if part rarely occurs outside synthesized sounds.

- Bill Sethares

------------------------------

Topic No. 4

Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 19:11:43 -0500
From: "Paul H. Erlich"
To: Tuning Forum
Subject: Reply to Johnny Reinhard on Mozart Tuning
Message-ID: <85B74BA01678D211ACDE00805FBE3C050B653C@MARS>

Johnny wrote,

I suspect the historic literature provides more than 50% of what happened in particular composer's tunings. There is much information, after all. It may not be "foolish" to focus there when trying to perform the music as the composer would have desired.

Johnny, I agree with this completely -- I fear you misunderstand what I wrote. I understood Ed Foote to say that he was making his decision by simply trying out all tunings that were documented around Mozart's time and deciding which one sounded best to his ears when Mozart was played on it. My point was that if one is taking this approach, if one has resigned oneself to having no information on what the composer would have actually preferred, then one is better off opening up the trial to many tunings that would have been possible at the time but may not have received lasting documentation. Such tunings, I said, may me much more numerous than the ones which were specifically named and written about.

By all means I would prefer to know what the composer used. Mozart sticking to the available keys of meantone at all times would be VERY strong evidence against well-temperament. However, if his music modulates to other keys during the course of a piece, that would be VERY strong evidence for well-temperament. Someone who has analyzed a good deal of Mozart should be able to answer this question. According to Herbert Kelletat in Manuel's post, Mozart stuck to meantone keys about 80% of the time so he may have been using a well-temperament himself but realized that many performances by others were bound to use meantone. Daniel Wolf was touting meantone for Mozart fairly recently, and I suspect that, at least for the pieces he had in mind, the wolf (meantone, not daniel) would not occur within a consonant chord.

For Mozart to distinguish between 2 sizes of semitones is simply a variant of Werckmeister I tuning (or just intonation as it is derived precisely from the overtone series).

That could be the case but there needs to be a third size of semitone somewhere in the keyboard's 12 in just intonation. Besides the diatonic semitone of 16:15 and the chromatic semitone of 25:24, just intonation would require semitones of 27:25 or 135:128, AFAIK. I don't remember what Mozart is actually reported to have said on this.

------------------------------

Topic No. 5

Date: Wed, 25 Nov 1998 20:11:08 -0800
From: monz@juno.com
To: Tuning Forum
Subject: Mozart's tuning
Message-ID: <19981125.210317.-133415.3.monz@juno.com>

Paul Erlich:

Last time we had this discussion, weren't there a few people who had various pieces of evidence for Mozart favoring meantone? Like his teaching of two semitone sizes, diatonic and chromatic?

Erlich is correct.

I don't recall how many people spoke up, but I was one of 'em. Mozart taught his students a 17-tone scale with the diatonic and chromatic semitones. Don't have the article with me, but I believe it was a Journal of Music Theory, '80s or before, called "Mozart's Teaching of Intonation", if I recall.

Also can't remember which semitone was larger :(

And his reaction to a 31-tone (obviously, meantone) instrument he played on?

I've never heard of this - please give more details.

- Joe Monzo
monz@juno.com
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/homepage.html

------------------------------

Topic No. 6

Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 12:36:01 +0530
From: Drew Skyfyre
To: Tuning Forum
Subject: Re: sound cards
Message-ID: <365CFDD9.463DE6F2@bom2.vsnl.net.in>

Hi,

Creamware's mega bucks Scope was mentioned. They also have a card called the Pulsar for @$1390.

------------------------------

Topic No. 7

Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 01:48:48 -0600
From: "Benjamin Tubb"
To: Tuning Forum
Subject: Re: [jv1080] MIDI patcher
Message-ID: <00a901be191c$251a1e80$c0ac31cc@Cybertron.cybertron.com>

Do I need to buy a MIDI patcher if I want to sequence my JP-8080 and XP-50 together using Cubase? For instance, I want to have the JP on channels 1&2 and the XP on 3-16. My sound card only has one MIDI in and out. If I do need one can somebody recommend one that's not more then $250.

You can (should ) get it to work.

1) connect the PC MIDI OUT to the XP-50's MIDI IN

2) connect the XP-50's MIDI OUT to the JP-8080's MIDI IN

3) on the XP-50
1) select the TEMP Performance you want to use
2) set the RECEIVE switches on Parts 1 and 2 to OFF
3) set the TRANSMIT switches on Parts 1 and 2 to ON
4) set the RECEIVE switches for Parts 3-16 to ON
5) set the TRANSMIT switches for Parts 3-16 to OFF
6) set the SYSTEM/SEQUENCER/SEQ MODE Thru switch to OFF
7) set the PERFORM/SYSTEM/MIDI/Control Channel to 3-16 or OFF only

-------------
Benjamin Tubb
AIM: brtubb
ICQ: 650264
brtubb@cybertron.com
http://home.cybertron.com/~brtubb

------------------------------

Topic No. 8

Date: Thu, 26 Nov 1998 09:09:51 -0500 (EST)
From: Johnny Reinhard
To: Tuning Forum
Subject: Re: Reply to Johnny Reinhard on Mozart Tuning
Message-ID:

To Paul: thanks for explaining your position. Sorry for taking your position out of context (to what it was referring to).

To Joe: distinguishing between chromatic and diatonic semitones is still a far cry from concluding 17 tones. Why not consider that Mozart was conceptualizing in Just Intonation, rather than an alternate temperament?

Mozart uses many notes in his pieces outside of a 12-tone minimum. Some have even tied Mozart to early examples of 12-note rows (supposedly demonstrating an afinity with serialism).

Mozart studied with Josef Hayden, who specified in writing that the enharmonics are identities for his string quartets. (I dont' have the article in my hands right now, but can find it after the holidays.)

In 1851 Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Beethoven's colleague and piano peer, wrote that there were chromatic semitones in theory for the composer, but that it need not concern the pianist.

Frank Zappa played on David Rothenberg's 31-tone electronic instrument: does that mean we should play Zappa's music in 31-tone during the next century? Thanks, Manuel for bringing up the possibility of Mozart's audio adventure, nevertheless.

Johnny Reinhard
Director
American Festival of Microtonal Music
318 East 70th Street, Suite 5FW
New York, New York 10021 USA
(212)517-3550/fax (212) 517-5495
reinhard@idt.net
http://www.echonyc.com/~jhhl/AFMM

------------------------------

End of TUNING Digest 1593
*************************

• For many more diagrams and explanations of historical tunings, see my book.

• If you don't understand my theory or the terms I've used, start here
  or try some definitions.
  
  

  ---

  
  

  I welcome feedback about this webpage: corrections, improvements, good links.
  Let me know if you don't understand something.

  return to the Tuning Digest Archives

  return to my home page
  

  return to the Sonic Arts home page