Jack Campin wrote:
>
> Apropos of Pythagorean and related tunings, I saved this article from
> rec.music.early a while ago. Margo is r.m.e's resident exotic-early-
> tunings wonk (she plays this way herself on a pitch-configurable
> electronic keyboard). I *dare* any of you to ask her to expand on this...
It's my experience that Margo knows *everything* there is to know about
early music, but I take a chance commenting on some of her information anyway.
> >
> >Indeed Vicentino promoted his _archicembalo_ and _arciorgano_ -- his
> >superharpsichord and superorgan (the latter a kind of positive organ which
> >could be disassembled, carried on a mule's back, and then reassembled at
> >the next performance location -- as permitting free transposition. If we
> >speak in "keys" in an Elizabethan sense as referring to the pitch level of
> >a modal final, rather than to later major/minor concepts, then it is
> >indeed correct that Vicentino's 31-note meantone tuning makes available
> >all intervals on all 31 steps of the cycle.
The Norwegian composer Eivind Groven (
http://www.notam.uio.no/nmi/bio/groven.htm ) is one of the persons who
has done most work on "pure" intonation for keyboard instruments. He
built a pipe organ (finished 1956) with 36 notes per octave and a system
of relays selecting pitches according to the chord played.
In 1965 he built an electronic organ with 43 pitches per octave and a
primitive computer to control it. (Perhaps the first ever computer
controlled musical instrument - and probably the only electric organ
ever fitted with a bagpipe register)
I was lucky enough to visit Eivind Groven's Institutt For Renstemming
while they still had the pipe organ in working condition, and hearing
the same piece played first with "pure" intonation (5/4 thirds and 3/2
fifths) and then with equal temperament was quite some revelation. On
direct comparation the equal tempered performance sounded painfully
harsh, out of tune and unmusical.
One of Groven's diciples, David Loberg Code of Western Michigan
University, has been recently been trying to transfer Groven's system to
the grand piano, employing three pianos linked by a computer.
Frank Nordberg
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