Jeff Gaynor wrote:
 >>I was once in a lecture on the WTK (don't remember who was giving it,
darn it), but I do remember the quote from Kirnberger that Bach would
retune his harpsichord very quickly in the course of a performance. This
was taken to mean that Bach probably did not stick with a single
temperament for every piece, but would make small adjustments to get the
best effect. Well-tempered then might have been favored because it
allowed for the least retuning to use the most keys. I thought it was an
arresting idea, actually.<<


[Getting off-topic slightly here toward harpsichords....]

What quote from Kirnberger was that (reference, please)?  Are you sure 
this wasn't simply the CPE Bach comment fed to Forkel for the biography, 
that JSB could tune his whole harpsichord in under 15 minutes [and not 
necessarily ever DURING a performance]?

I would be especially surprised if Kirnberger ever provided anything 
like that, on record about Bach, because he (Kirnberger) was mostly into 
promoting his own invented "pure" temperament, the one that has the 
single note A tempered at 1/2 comma each from D and E, and everything 
else at pure 5ths or major 3rds from something else.  That is the one we 
now call "Kirnberger 2".  The one that's "Kirnberger 3" (like on Notre 
Dame University's new Fritts organ, etc) shows up only in a private 
letter Kirnberger wrote, and wasn't published until long after his 
death.  "Kirnberger 2" is the biggie for him, and then for a bunch of 
German writers repeating one another for the next half century or so. 
There is good coverage of this string of documents (Kirnberger and 
following encyclopedists/theorists) in Rita Steblin's book:
http://www.amazon.com/History-Characteristics-Early-Centuries-Second/dp/1580460410

As for retuning harpsichords very quickly, in 15 minutes or whatever, 
that's not really a coup.  It just says that Bach was well-experienced 
at it, and able to hear things carefully enough to work quickly.  I and 
lots of other people have developed that same skill of tuning a whole 
harpsichord in 9-12 minutes, by ear, by whatever temperament(s) are 
appropriate to the music on the docket.  The only constraint that such a 
time limit places is that the temperament recipe has to be simple enough 
to hear quickly/accurately, and firmly memorized, without a bunch of 
time wasted in fussing or fixing elementary errors.

The only occasions it takes me more than 15-20 minutes are those where 
I'm working on somebody else's harpsichord that hasn't been *kept* in 
tune often enough, across a year, to be able to hold whatever basic 
pitch is being put onto it....  In such cases it's better to do one 
quick one anyway, then come back half a day later and do it again, and 
maybe a third one, until the instrument has adjusted itself to those 
tensions.  But again that's not about temperament, merely about stability.


Bradley Lehman
http://www.larips.com

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