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Greetings,
That would be as similar as a fish is to a bicycle. Equating harshness to color is naive. You may as well say to tune every fourth note sharp, i.e. the musical result would be random. This is not the case with a traditional circulating temperament, as the inequality is NOT random, and to even suggest it calls into question how well the musical qualities of the temperaments are understood.
Regards,

Hey Jeff,

An interesting thought. Almost all historical UTs ( there are a few UTs with apparently random varying widths of M3s and P5s) start from the same basic premise - a cycle (spiral, circle) of fifths radiating up and down from C. This was so entrenched for some centuries that 'key colour' was well defined and treatises written about it ( Schubart being the most oft quoted source). Even Prokofiev slavishly followed Schubart's treatise on key colour when writing the ballet Romeo and Juliet. I've have done an analysis of this work and it is truly freaky.

Then as a "thought experiment", it worked. It got you to thinking. But surely you see what I am driving at. Either way the pianist is being forced into something they may not want.

Hey Jeff,

Please don't take this the wrong way, but, as a pianist for decades, I was ignorant of the options available to the pianist with regard to temperaments. I had heard about ET and assumed it was the only option, and, with blissful ignorance, accepted that (in spite of simultaneously playing and performing on organ, harpsichord and even clavichord in a variety of UTs, which I tuned myself or had tuned). I think most pianists are in the same boat. I have recently attended university piano master classes, as an observer, and asked the performers if they knew anything about voicing, regulation, temperaments. Not one of them had any knowledge, as they were not being taught, or ignored the teaching.

My piano is voiced like that. FCGBb I voiced a bit mellower than the rest. I like it.
In this post I said what you said.

Kees

Yes, but some are reacting as if we are "peaking behind the curtain".

Wouldn't the problem with Unequal Voicing be that voicing F# and Bb harshly, for example, would then make the tonalities of D Major and Bb Major harsh, which, in most UTs, are quite calm.

Edit: I think we use the word harsh inappropriately here. Faster beating M3s, as opposed to slower beating M3s, can be described in many ways. I liked BDB's 'boiling'.

Indeed, that is why I don't do it that way.

Kees

Time is not that much, sorry if I am breaf.

Conjectures: for many (all respected) posters it is what "you have grown up" with, as if that could shape the cochlea; for me, it is a simple question of “ear” and intonation.

Hi prout,

Why do you think that my "statement is not about a standard"? Would not you like a reference standard of that kind? How do you expand your temperament octave?

You ask "..how many octaves..". But when you say "..can one maintain the essential character of the temperament and still maintain a cohesive musical sound over the whole piano.." you are still thinking in terms of "octave/s". That is partly wrong, as you are asking about "the whole piano".

Yes, it would be nice to talk about color, intervals, voicing, emotions and musical impact... if only all of us were able to tune progressive intervals.

Prout, Ed, have you already shared a recording "for tuners", with chromatic intervals played slowly?

150 years ago, Hermann Helmholtz figured out all the frequencies for ET but even he said at the time that those did not represent the reality of music. Yet William Braide White latched on to that and caused many people to believe in ET as the one and only solution for piano tuning.

So, there is the standard, if that is what you are after. Just like Lawrence Welk had the piano technicians do: straight to the strobe. Come to find out, however, that does not exactly work. So, what does? Where does one draw that line? I have my own standards (yes, plural) and I am sticking with them.

Alfredo, as I view it, there is no particular reason why chromaticism in music requires ET.

Hi Bill,

Do you say that because you have found the ET chromaticisms?

No, Alfredo, I have not found the "ET chromaticisms", whatever you may mean by that. What I am saying is that just because some music may have some chromatic elements in it, it does not imply that ET is a requirement for that music to sound correct.

What I always sense is that piano technicians and musicians alike, when presented with the mere concept of unequal temperament, that instantly one is gripped with the fear of howling wolves and blood curdling dissonances!

One may have read something about the ancient, archaic form of tuning called MEAN tone where only a few keys sounded acceptable at all and probably lifeless and the rest were violently out of tune! Modulation is impossible!

Our savior and redeemer, J.S. Bach then found the solution for that, the glorious path to all music sounding in tune, forever more, the one and only true and final solution: ET. A scale is a scale and a note is a note and that is what Hermann Helmoltz figured out 150 years ago and THAT is the standard! Accept it! Live with it! Don't mess with it!

Whatever any of these eccentric people who go advocating something else will inevitably be proved unacceptable. It would not work, it cannot work and should not be tried! We need a one and only standard to which all music will fit and must conform!

I really believe that is more or less what the Original Poster thought in terms of. He is a really nice guy, a great singer in his own right and serves a great clientele. His local opera company produced educational videos where a pianist talked about and performed the great melodies of great operas. Surely, only ET would suffice for that! Surely, any vocalist should only train with a piano tuned in ET! Right?

I heard the same objections from a sponsor of our own opera company in the early 90's. She was the one putting up a large amount of the money it took to produce those productions. She asked me, "Wouldn't an unequal temperament tend to throw the singers off!!!??? (with piercing eyes and a scowl upon her face).

That question was put to me after many operas and symphony chorus rehearsals, (year after year with the encouragement of the artistic director at the time), had been accomplished using 18th Century style Well Temperaments.

I looked at her very deliberately and directly. I said, "Were you not present over the last several seasons for opera rehearsals [and then named the many famous and well known operas that had been on the schedule]? "Yes", she replied, "And since you have been maintaining the piano, it has sounded so much better that before! The pitch and intonation have improved greatly."

Then I asked, "Were you aware that in each and every one of those cases where I had been a member of that opera chorus, the piano had been tuned in an unequal temperament?"

The look on her face had to be seen to be described! SHE had been paying for all of that! She went to the rehearsals to hear the music that she loved and hear it develop. She had never once given a thought to the piano being tuned in anything but ET!

She then remarked, "I just don't understand it! All I can say is, the entire time I was growing up and I had voice lessons, I am quite sure that the piano was only ever tuned in ET!" I replied to her that ET is only really a point of reference. No instrument or voice really ever adheres strictly to it. If they did, they would actually cause the music to sound less interesting.

This discussion came up when a new, world premier opera had been commissioned and the subject was the story of the local but world famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. It had material in nearly every key imaginable. It was modern. It had chromaticism, to be sure.

I knew then, that I needed a Victorian style Well Temperament and developed one for it. If one plays a chromatic scale in a late 19th Century (Victorian) style Well Temperament, it cannot be distinguished from ET on that basis alone because the deviations from ET are too small.

The late professor, Owen Jorgensen taught and demonstrated that fact during his lectures. Yet, when actual music and harmony were played, a Victorian style Well Temperament still retains the Key Signature distinctions of earlier (18th Century) style Well Temperaments.

The opera rehearsals went on with the way I had chosen to tune the piano. The symphony chorus rehearsals also went on and were successful that season with the same Victorian style Well Temperament. I do not recall what the symphony chorus did that season but never, at any time nor from anyone, was there an objection nor a single remark made that the piano sounded out of tune or was unsatisfactory in any way.

The artistic director (conductor of both rehearsals and performances) was always pleased with my work at the public venue as he was with what I did for his personal piano at home. We had long discussions about it. He was given Owen Jorgensen's book, Tuning as a gift. He told me that he had enjoyed reading the many anecdotes that he found within it about how people argued over temperament and that no one really ever actually tuned ET at any time in the past.

So, here we are in the present, well into the 21st Century and the Original Poster, Opera Tenor found out that his temperament that he truly believed to be ET was not quite ET after all. One technician jumped all over it but I came to his defense that it actually did show some adherence to Key Signature.

So, you, Alfredo, I encourage to continue doing what you have found to be successful but frankly, I find your whole premise about "modern ET's" to be fatally flawed in its very concept! It is either ET or it is not!

It is either what Hermann Helmholtz figured out (and actually warned would not work) or not! Whatever "CHAS" represents or signifies, I do not know but I also do not care. I am not going to try to attempt it. Whatever university studies have been done, whoever lauded how you made the piano sound, does not interest me, but is, of course, good for you, sorry to say.

As for what people say that one "cannot tell" what the last temperament was, I would say this: I went to a Men's Chorus rehearsal tonight and after that rehearsal, I spoke to the director about how the piano sounded at the last performance.

It just so happened that last December, I took ill enough with coughing and sneezing that I could not participate in the performance. I did, however, manage to get the piano tuned earlier in the day for it.

The director today told me that the piano had been excellent, better than he had heard it for quite some time. I remarked to him that I could tell that I had been the one to tune that same piano two years previously for the same kind of performance. I said, "Don't ask me how I would know just now, but be assured that I could tell that I had been the last person to tune the piano a full two years prior to that event".

In the meantime, we had performed at other venues but had come back to that venue that time. So, here is a nice recording of the piano two years ago, accompanying a choir of men's voices performing a work by Ralph Vaughn Williams. It does modulate and it does so chromatically. The temperament is NOT ET! The piano is a Yamaha C3. I used the amount of stretch in the octaves that I believed would make the piano sound its best.

https://app.box.com/s/ea642d1482eb9cf1fb2f

When I put my muting strips in to tune the piano last December, I could definitely tell that it had been my Victorian style Well Temperament which had last been tuned on the piano 2 years previously!

So, to any and all who say that one cannot tell anything from a piano that had not been very recently tuned, I say that is not true at all. One can often actually tell a lot!

And yes, that really DOES mean that I can quite often distinguish whether the piano had been previously tuned in Reverse Well or not. It is actually the pervasiveness of Reverse Well over and above anything else that leads me to throw out any sort of establishment of any kind of standard whatsoever.

One, single standard is only an illusion. It is only something imagined but which rarely exists with the possible exception of the present concert/broadcast recording industry. They certainly do have a handle on it but I am resisting that choke hold!

You make very good point, Bill. The fact that the piano was unremarkably tuned to a UT and she didn't notice how wonderful it sounded, proves that most people can't tell the difference. So why the effort?

You say pure ET is uninteresting. You say UT makes the music sound better. I say nobody, except maybe you, would cringe to hear a lovely piece of music played on a piano tuned in slight RW with clean octaves and unisons.

I run a business. I need more proof that the effort I would be exerting to learn the subtleties of a UT would be valuable to my customers. I can't afford that time, unless I considered it a hobby.

I never said she didn't notice. She had noticed how much better piano had been sounding since I was caring for it. They were 18th Century style Well Temperaments, not Victorian. That is what I said. They did not "throw the singers off" as she would have imagined an unequal temperament would have.

But thanks for bringing up a good point. ET has always been a business decision, not one that actually serves any particular music the best, not even chromatic music, whatever may be imagined by that. It is the one size fits all idea that was forced upon everyone about 100 years ago but was hardly ever perfected until about 30 years ago.

I run a business too and therefore it behooves me to serve my clients, not other piano technicians. I continue to respond to what my clients respond to positively, not what other piano technicians say I should do or not do.

Point taken.

There are those of us who get the same sort of compliments with equal temperament.

True. (And from sources that might surprise "UT only" advocates.)