Hi Bruce,

No need to assert that you are on topic in the subject (besides, there are
those for who the matter of temperament is considered mathematical and
properly belonging to the tuning groups, and off topic :-)

What exactly did you 'switch at dessert'? Not clear.

Anyway, while a given temperament has an ideal representation
arithmetically, the practical musician never achieves pinpoint precision -
although one can get very close - due to lack of exact hearing, issues with
the instrument, noise from the surroundings, strings with kinks, various
nonlinearities and inharmonicities, and a hundred other things. In practice
you tune as well as you can. Then there's nothing wrong with setting a few
notes between pieces for sharps or flats is there? After all, guitarists
and lutenists and violinists and others tune between pieces.

What we think Mr Froberger did and what he actually did we will never know.
And I don't think there is a treatise by him on it (?). But it does not
stretch credibility to assume that he would tweak notes for different
contexts, after all, it a rapid and easy. But then there is the other
aspect, which is that of hearing perception in previous times. Flattened
out as we are by equal temperament and modern hearing (even those of us who
are learned in all the temperaments), it possible that musicians enjoyed
and indeed relished the marvellous effects in meantone, which we tend to
rapidly dismiss as being out of tune or unusable,. We have different mental
filters today than Froberger had.

Froberger may have had several instruments on hand or home or in concerts.
It's not unreasonable that you could tune them differently for different
key contexts, providing a refreshing change of colour and sound for the
listener at the same time. Or some on the organ and some on the
harpsichord. All sorts of winderful possibilities.

Speaking of old threads, I seem to recall there has been a lot of
discussion on this topic on the list in the past. May be worth doing a
search.

Andrew


On 2 December 2017 at 10:55, Bruce Jacobs <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
> What do we think would have been done by the master, given some pieces
> need sharps, and others flats?
>
>

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