Dear Claudio and everybody else:


some questions and addition.

2017-12-02 11:36 GMT+01:00 J. Claudio Di Veroli <[log in to unmask]>:

> > Chris wrote: Maybe Froberger did what I do: retune to sharp or flat where
> necessary.
>
> Dear Chris,
>
> With due respect, [..]



> 2) As for Froberger's temperament, I am surprising that we keep discussing
> a
> matter that has been fully researched, and on which scholars are in full
> agreement. A few basics of their findings:
>
> [...]
>
> - In the Froberger Vienna entourage the occasional use of Equal Temperament
> on keyboards is well documented.
>

What is the documentation for the actual use of ET in Vienna.


>
> - In Italy he studied under Frescobaldi precisely at the time the latter
> was
> advocating Equal Temperament.
>

This has been discussed, but I haven't seen that Martin Kirnbauer's
research (2013) on the matter – 27 years after Barbieri 1986 (which is
taken into account by Kirnbauer) – has been disproved.

If it has been disproven, there must have be  some previously known
contemporary source in the past years that claims that Frescobaldi was
actually advocating Equal Temperament. What source is that?
See our discussion one year ago (also on December 4), which we of course
don't have to repeat:
Froberger Temperament
<https://list.uiowa.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1612&L=HPSCHD-L&D=0&1=HPSCHD-L&9=A&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4&P=14546>,
  13:18 CdV
Froberger Temperament
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 4 Dec 2016 15:09 IO
Froberger Temperament
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4
Dec 2016 17:11 CdV
Froberger Temperament
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4
Dec 2016 19:29 IO
Froberger Temperament
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4
Dec 2016 19:52 CdV
Froberger Temperament
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4
Dec 2016 19:17  IO


>
> - However, the prevailing practice in Italy was meantone, often with the
> well-known enharmonic 14-keys-per-octave (D#-Eb, G#-Ab). This fits
> virtually
> all of Frescobaldi's and Froberger's works.
>

Froberger's work seem to fit into the 19-note range
*Gb-Db-Ab-Eb-Bb-F-C-G-D-A-E-B-F#-C#-G#-D#-A#-E#-B#* of a *cembalo
universale*.
He was literally surrounded by enharmonicism. Already during his studies
with Frescobaldi as well as at the Habsburg court. Though we don't know
whether he had access to such instruments in Froberger's last time in
Montbeliard it is enlightening to remember that he stroke up a conversation
by letters with C. Hugyens, who was one of the proponents of the
31-note-system.

My post about* temperament around Froberger (and a bit Bach); Viennese
keyboards with split keys and 'enharmonic' organs, Rome, Frescobaldi,
Huygens*
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on
this list elaborates on the subject.
(additions here
<https://list.uiowa.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1512&L=HPSCHD-L&P=R290&1=HPSCHD-L&9=A&I=-3&J=on&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches&z=4>
and here
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)

I repeat the core from my mail from March 20, 2005:

In short the meantone/just intonation web around Froberger


   - Luzzaschi, the famous player of the 31-/36-note instruments,
      - Frescobaldi who played such an instrument in Rome 1619
      - Huygens supporting 31-note-meantone-system having contact to
      Froberger.
      - And then we have Michael Buliowsky de Dulycz, a pupil of Froberger,
      whose copy (Ms., Strasbourg 1675) of  Froberger pieces  was
discovered some
      years ago. He a treatise on the 31-note-system in 1680, both in
German and
      Latin (*Brevis de Emendatione Organi Musici Tractatio*. [...] 1680.
      Facsimile edition = *Bibliotheca Organologica*. Vol. 68. [...] Buren:
      [...] Knuf, 1988.)





> Conclusion: for Froberger's pieces that fall outside the usual meantone
> range, the "authentic" temperament is not to retune flats to sharps for
> different pieces, but instead either use Equal Temperament or even better
> to
> have a 14-key keyboard tuned in standard 1/4 comma meantone.
>

My conclusion, also quoted from my 2005-post:

Of course, all this evidence does not exclude, that Froberger might have
experimented with temperaments on strunged keyboard instruments which
wouldn't have offered these possibliities.
We simply don't know.

The historical evidence and the likeliness speaks for instruments tuned in
meantone, (in single cases) just intonation, and/or 19- to 31-note
instruments for Froberger's music.

Any well-tempered system [incl. ET] has little likeliness as far as the
evidence of his lifetime is concerned. What the 18th century musician would
have chosen or experimented with as a suitable temperament for Froberger is
a different discussion.



What a player *today*  chooses to do if a piece requires more notes than
which can be achieved by retuning single notes to their meantone enharmonic
neighbour is left to the player's discretion. The sound of the instrument,
the acoustics of a room may come into play individually.
One could find at least one theoretical argument for using ET: It doesn't
provide inequality of keys –  like meantone temperament.  But to me it
seems that the essence of the sound aesthetics of Froberger was not
different from his contemporaries: That essence was the ideal of just
intonation. It remained the ideal for intonation for the following two
centuries.


Best

Ibo

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