Meantone Temperament and Other Historical Tuning Systems, Part 2 

One thing I always wondered: What keys were "available" in meantone? Does the temperament have a root? What about other tuning systems? Maybe my question should actually be: what major chords could you play that wouldn't sound out of tune?

The ET known since 1500? That's new for me. I wish there were more recordings of baroque music using other temperaments than ET is really nice to the ear

I’ve been trying to understand the history of violin temperament 🎻 and other strings. On the pedagogical institutions that were erected. I know that Leopold Motzart and contemporaries barley mentioned temperaments other than ‘to be tuned slightly sharp of the piano?’ Could you illuminate this topic for us?

Thank you so very much! I’m so glad that you found my videos to be both clear and helpful!

Great book! I thought he did an excellent job of explaining both the theoretical and the historical aspects of temperament.

I also found this video as a result of that book. While it makes some compelling arguments, I found that the explanations of what meantone temperament is to be lacking (at least for someone without a strong musical background). I really enjoyed this video, thanks! It makes much more sense to me now.

Thank you so much! I'm so glad my video has been helpful for you!

I tune modern pianos in a Well Temperament and you'll find my recordings searching for instance for "Composer" "Unequal Temperament". Werckmeister III is hideous in Ab major and too strong for pianos. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-rfqhL7UaB3Y.html is a nice recent recording

I just answered my own question by looking up your link to Beebe's temperament library.

Thank you for your kind words! And what interesting experiences with clavichords! That's an instrument I'd actually like to spend more time with myself.

For anyone else who wondered this, there is a fantastic explanation in Ross Duffin's book How Equal-Temperament Ruined Harmony. Recommend read

Can't give you the source (I don't play violin) but I remember reading about intonation on the violin - they learn to play one way when it's just strings together (or winds) and a different way when there is a piano around, because then they have to adapt the "out of tune" intervals of Equal Temperament coming from the piano. Pianists can ignore this subject, but not piano tuners.

@@gerardvila4685 As a long-time pianist, I have to say that piano is one of the most restrictive instruments to learn on if you're just starting to learn music since it only teaches you 12-tone equal temperament. A large number of Western musicians these days literally have never heard of any tuning other than 12-tone equal temperament, which is especially true if you go into non-classical genres like pop, rock, and contemporary worship. I'd even say most people are actually quite deficient in their knowledge of music theory and musical skills, such as how tuning works, what commas are, what the harmonic series is, what just intonation is, and the historical and cultural context of tuning itself. 12-TET is, like most things we take for granted today, actually a very recent discovery that took a lot of iterations to reach; the Chinese managed to mathematically solve it at the end of the 16th century, and it has only become the predominant tuning system in Western music from the early 19th century onwards. While I don't want to make music seem like something only accessible to a select few group of people, I also understand that these are important things to learn. I desperately want to get together with a few friends of mine and make some recordings of certain pop and worship songs in 19- or 31-tone equal temperament. I like these tunings (especially 31) since they're both meantone tunings like 12-TET is, the number of notes is still manageable, and the difference between the way they sound vs. 12-TET is still big enough to make a noticeable difference. 43-TET, as 1/5-comma meantone, is very nice in my opinion, but even many trained musicians in the non-classical world would struggle to tell the difference between that and 12-EDO and consider the number of notes prohibitive at this level. 43 is further complicated by the fact that you would need exotic accidentals (sharp-ups, sharp-downs, natural-ups, natural-downs, flat-ups, and flat-downs) to notate everything, whereas 19 can be notated entirely with standard accidentals and 31 can be notated with quarter-tone accidentals in the same way 24-TET can. The reason I explore alternative tunings is because I love how the seemingly tiny differences in the way they tune notes and intervals can make a very noticeabl difference in the mood that a particular song gives off.

@@electric7487 One idea I've never seen discussed, but which should be quite simple to do, would be to add a set of "transposing" keys or pedals to a digital keyboard. In the same way as a classical harp, which is basically diatonic, is converted into a chromatic instrument by a set of pedals (each pedal adds a sharp or a flat to one note of the diatonic scale), you could define 12 non-ET tunings - for instance "Just Intonation C", “Just Intonation C#", "Just Intonation D", etc, and switch between them on the fly, while still playing the keyboard in exactly the same way as usual. This would reproduce what a singer or string or wind player tends to do, more or less consciously, when the music modulates from one key to another. (Perhaps modern musicians don't do this, having listened to ET pianos their whole lives, but I'm guessing they must have done so when mean-tone tuning was standard.)

Yeah

Thanks!

They probably played the chromatic scale to see if it sounds equidistant.

@@Anonymous-df8it This works fine for lutes and Basse de Viols. They didn't listen, they did see and the result was all right.