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Date: | Tue, 6 Dec 2016 16:24:59 +0000 |
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"Not a usable temperament " - I quite agree about the overall quality of these two-wolf temperaments, eg for playing Bach, but it is not an absolutely unusable temperament at all.
My take-home point is (if you don't want to read the following) that this temperament might possibly help to jizz up some tonally boring repertoires.
The question to ask would be what music this temperament is usable for, since we have evidence that it was used by "low-brow" tuners in 18th-century Germany (and possibly Denmark too, where Schulz was an influential teacher). The reason I quoted Schulz was that his recommendations seem to indicate actual practise in some circles. Here's a translation of what Schulz wrote in its praise: "On a keyboard tuned in this way, every triad or every key has its particular character which corresponds very exactly with the key character which one can distinguish so easily on the other instruments [of the orchestra]. Those who tune the fifths c-g-d-a-e pure, end up with a scale and a character on C that only belongs to C sharp, and conversely C sharp becomes C [in character]. However, in every tuning the most important thing is to take care that the common church modes are kept preferentially pure." [He goes on to give instructions for how to tune an orchestra from the keyboard. ]
This tuning that favours the church modes and treats the key of A as a foreign key may suit particular "backward-looking" repertoires, possibly "im Volkston". It might even turn out that some music needs this tuning to prevent it from becoming unbearably bland. Maybe it will get more zithery and start to make sense. One could start by looking at Schulz' own music, some of which is available on IMSLP, but I confess I haven't done this beyond giving it a very quick glance. Now, back to my German language corrections.
Best,
Michael
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