Le 04/12/2016 13:18, J. Claudio Di Veroli écrit :

>
> meantone ...
>
> And indeed, this being the best-sounding Baroque temperament, most Baroque
> music sounds best on it, PROVIDED it avoids (or just visits very quickly)
> the wolf fifth, the 4 wolf major thirds, the 6 wolf augmented fourths...
>
> We also know that meantone was common in Froberger's time. However, let me
> quote from my "Unequal Temperaments" book, section 11.8:
>
> "Froberger and Louis Couperin show an advanced use of flats and sharps in
> their keyboard compositions: they are playable in Meantone, but only with
> varied locations of the wolf fifth. In a few pieces, however, the wolf fifth
> should be in impossibly extreme positions such as E#-C (for Louis Couperin's
> Pavane in F# minor) and even B#-G (for Froberger's Ricercari FbWV 406 and
> 412).

What are your sources that state that the large major thirds need to be 
avoided? I think the music itself proves that composers deliberately 
used these large major thirds in certain contexts and that it would be 
absurd to avoid them by transposing the temperament. Louis Couperin's 
Pavane is a good example. First, had he wanted to avoid the large major 
thirds, he could have simply written it in D minor. Then, no matter what 
temperament you chose, including meantone, ET, ordinaire, the C-E# third 
and the C# major chord, which he visits for a full measure and the end 
of the first section, and for a half-measure elsewhere, are not going to 
sound "good". So there's no reason to believe Couperin wasn't using 
these large thirds intentionally. On the contrary, exotic keys seem 
precisely to point to a tuning where these thirds sound "bad" (too 
wide). ET kills this music...

Dennis

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