Interesting because he starts on middle C and sometimes tunes a note to either ET or strict consonance and then changes the pitch to the well temperament to let us hear the change in beats:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNY7Eynt...ideo_title
Found on the PW forum at http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthre...ost1731966
That's a great video. I've been using well temperaments for playing popular music for some time, but this is the clearest demonstration of its merits I've seen.
Hello All,
Regarding well-temperaments and Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, a distinction must be made between well-temperament and even (or equal) temperament tuning. Contrary to popular belief, and this was mis-taught when I was at the American Conservatory of Music some 35 years ago, Bach's intent of the WTC was NOT to propose equal temperament as has been rampantly taught.
Although well temperament does allow one to play in all 12 chromatic keys of both major and minor, individual tonalities do have their own distinctive "flavors" of tonal coloration. Contrasting this fact with equal temperament, the latter portrays no discernible difference between any two keys of major tonality, nor between any two keys of minor tonality.
I bring this fact up, because I am amused at how many keyboard players (mainly classical pianists and organists) swear they can hear differences between a piece played in G Major (supposedly sounding "happy" to their ears) and the same piece played in, say, E-flat Major. If you don't tell them ahead of time that the supposed G major piece is played in E-flat, they will swear that the piece is still happy sounding.
Case in point, one pianist told me how he loved the key of G for its happy sounding "characteristic" -- to which I responded by playing for him Beethoven's Rondo (Rage Over A Lost Penny) in the key of Eb (transposing at will a major third downward from G Major) on his equal-temperament piano. Since my friend wasn't watching my hands, he said, "See what I mean? Happy!"
I didn't have the heart to tell him that I was faking it, and playing in E-flat instead of G!
Back to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, JSB composed his preludes and fugues to make full use of the individual tonal colors afforded by his proposed tuning scheme -- closest to Werkmeister III. When we listen to a Glenn Gould or Roslyn Turreck play Bach, or Marta Argerich playing the Chopin Etudes in equal temperament, we actually lose some of the character that the Composer had intended, because the individual tonal colorations added actually influenced the choice of key tonality in non-equal temperament!
It is for this reason that some of my demos for Pianoteq have invoked Werkmeister III tuning.
Cheers,
Joe
P.S. When I tune pianos by ear, I do tend to shift slightly away from ET so as to "calm" some of the vibrating harmonics. I have even done this for my church's Steinway Model M-- much to the happy surprise of professional string players who later asked me what I did to the piano -- because they didn't have to "de-tune" as much in order to match the piano!
One reason I like these videos is the degree to which he emphasizes making C major the most perfect key, and thus starting the tuning by pitching middle C and then the third above it, instead of using the modern sequence of setting A to 440 and then tuning 5ths and 4ths because they are easier to tune in equal temp, with its faster beating 3rds. I'm by no means a professional or possibly a good tuner, but I do hear a difference if one starts on middle C instead of on A440.
I wonder if our PT well temperaments are based on deriving all of the pitches from the starting point of A440. (The well temperaments created in Scala don't seem to start on middle C.)
Would if make a difference if we had an option of choosing the diapason as middle C instead of the A above?