Hi,

2017-01-21 1:23 GMT+01:00 Andrew Bernard <[log in to unmask]>:

>
>
> Amusingly, on Werckmeister III, Herr Werckmeister himself wrote that this
> is not a particularly good tuning,


He did not write that, but it was one of several solutions he suggested
over the years.
W III was Werckmeister's suggested for music in keys more distant from C.
For keys around C he had another suggestion.


> but more a way of converting an organ in meantone into a halfway good

sort of well temperament with the least cutting of pipework.


No, the amount of work is basically the same for retuning an organ in
(standard quarter-comma) meantone temperament to a "halfway good sort of
well temperament" or a "well temperament" or the special case of equal
temperament.

When one has to cut pipes or tune with a cone it does not make a difference
in the work necessary:  Whether one has to cut 1 cm or 1,2 cm or to tune
0,5 mm or 0,7 mm with the cone will not effect the amount of work
noticeably. Even if it were a difference in that respect,  there are so
many other factors in tuning and especially in the olden times (changes of
room temperature, stability of wind system, quality of pipework, et al.)
that will have more effect on the amount of work necessary.

You can find a discussion of all that in my dissertation (online
<https://sites.google.com/site/iboortgies/phd-dissertationiboortgies>),
especially chapter 5 about the practicalities around retuning an organ in
historical time.



> It was never seriously proposed as an excellent harpsichord tuning.


Not specifically by Werckmeister, but certainly by others as a generally
good choice temperament for keyboard instruments in general, incl.
harpsichords.
In modern times it has been proposed and it has been used  by many great
players. Those are all wrong?

It's a pretty miserable sounding tuning to my taste,


To my taste W III can sound fine. Depends very much on the properties  of a
instrument.
Its use in modern organs and after restorations has nothing to do with the
general practice of organ temperament in Northern and Central  Germany
until the practice began very slowly to change from ca. the 1740s onwards.
Before any non-meantone tuned organ was have been a great exception (the
1720s is the first time that we know about a very few examples, scattered
over Northern and Central Germany).
After 1750/60 starts the great wave of temperamental change in organs in
Germany. It would take about the life span of a human to be finished in the
first third of the 19th century. Very often the temperament was not changed
- and instead one built a new organ which might fit better to the new tonal
aesthetics. This included the tendency to more fundamental sound which
favoured a "new temperament" as the sources frequently call it, very often
also specified as "gleichschwebende Temperatur", a handmade equal
temperament.

W III is a compromise like any useful temperament and like any circulating
temperament the amount of compromise is considerable especially in the
major thirds. Give and take ... I find 1/6-comma temperaments much less
convincing on instruments with a lot of partials in the sound (the smaller
fifths sound not good enough, especially usually in the rather central
major chords on C, G, D and A).


> and I roll my eyes when amateur groups insist on it.


There are professional groups who use WIII.

How about trying some superior tuning? Lehmann?
>

Lehman's modern temperament has been discussed extensively here on the
list. Can best be looked up in the list archive.
It's sounds sort of ok, if one plays pieces in A-flat major a lot.
It is not a temperament close to any of the temperaments that were
suggested for *musical practice* in Bach's time (it comes close to one or
two speculative temperament designs by Neidhardt, which he never included
into his well-known suggestions for practical use specified for various
social settings: village, small town, big town or court)  .


Kind regards

Ibo

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