From: alves@calvin.usc.edu (William Alves)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Define "Well Tempered"
Date: 26 Jan 1993 14:01:49 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: calvin.usc.edu

In article <will.728068016@ogre> will@ogre.cica.indiana.edu (William Sadler) writes:
>In <8938@orbit.cts.com> jseboldt@pnet51.orb.mn.org (John Seboldt) writes:
>
>>Sorry, but Bach is a bit early to look toward as the "father of equal
>>temperament".  Think later -- early Romantics.  Probably not until the
>>chromatic ramblings of Liszt, Wagner, and their followers do we have true
>>equal temperament firmly established

>"Early Romantics" would be Dussek, Gossec, Clementi, Hummel, Beethoven etc.
>I don't think that their music is any more particularly in need of
>evenly tempered tuning than Haydn or Bach. 

Well, Bach wrote for a tuning system in which all keys are playable, just
as later composers did. So he had no less need to play in all keys than,
say, Beethoven. The desire to play in all keys is what drove the gradual
adoption of "well" temperaments to replace meantone temperaments.
The gradual adoption of equal temperament to supplant well temperaments
was due to other factors. Among these were the belief that all keys should
sound the same. Also, sudden modulations to foreign keys, common in Beetho-
ven but not Bach, would be much easier in equal temperament. Circular
temperaments were actually an intermediate step - not all keys were equal,
but the small inequalities were spread around the cycle of fifths, so that
a modulation from C to Ab would sound no more jarring than a modulation
from C to G. In fact, some of the circular tunings theorists propose are
for all practical purposes equivalent to equal temperament.

>For that matter, I'm not sure that there is anything in the music of
>Wagner or Liszt that particularly demands equal temperament.

Well, Wagner aside (because the discussion of temperament should be limited
mostly to keyboard instruments - orchestras not really playing in a single
tuning system), I disagree, the intense chromaticism and use of foreign
relations in the piano music of Liszt would be quite a different experience
in anything other than equal temperament (or something pretty close).

>I have always been under the impression that equal temperament was a
>20th c phenomenon.

It's impossible to give any hard dates, because tuners everywhere use
different methods and it's only the theorists that write things down.
I think it was Alexander Ellis who gave the example of an organ tuner
in England using meantone temperament in the 1890's. However, many writers
argued the case of equal temperament in the mid-1700's, and the tone
of the late 18th century writers suggest that equal temperament is pretty
common. In the 19th century, writings about practical tuning usually refer
to equal temperament or something damn close. Chopin is another composer
much of whose music would be pretty ugly in unequal temperament. Different
places had different practices at different times, however, and it's
generally assumed that practice lags behind theory in this area.

Lou Harrison is one who also calls equal temperament a 20th century 
phenomenon, but he is generally referring to the improvement in construction
of wind instruments and the double-action harp rather than keyboard tuning
practice. He sees Schoenberg's 12-tone method as the logical response to
equal temperament and thinks it no accident that atonality coincides with
this period.

Earlier, John Seboldt wrote:

>Just because Bach wrote preludes/fugues in all keys doesn't mean he's talking
>about playing them all at one sitting on one single tuning.  (This idea of
>playing cycles like this in one cosmic sweep is definitely a modern
>invention!)  A harpsichord was treated more like a guitar in that it was
>frequently retuned, perhaps a few notes retuned on the spot to be more
>for monthly tunings!)  

It's true that Bach never intended the WTC to be performed at one sitting,
but I don't think that retuning the harpsichord was required for the
performance of preludes and fugues in distantly-related keys. That's why
he calls it the Well-Tempered Clavier. There are a few pieces, in fact,
that show off the chromatic possibilities within a single prelude or fugue.

Speaking from experience, it generally takes an experienced tuner a half
hour to 45 minutes to entirely retune an instrument by ear (depending on
the size and so on). It's something that needs to be done every week or
so, depending on the weather, but certainly not in between pieces on a
concert. In fact, some instruments used to be built with two manuals, not
necessarily for timbral differences, but so that the upper manual could
handle certain keys and the lower one others. It is generally assumed that
the famous chromatic hexachord fantasy from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book
(by John Bull?) is for such an instrument. But by Bach's time, temperament
allowed him to play in all keys without retuning.

Bill Alves
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical