The Bach Temperament : Time to Demystify?

[@moogfooger]

Wim, Please do not feel that you need to apologize for too long a presentation!! Especially when it comes to incredibly important topics like tuning. I for one am so so appreciative to have someone like you on youtube. You make it worthwhile. It is difficult in the modern world to see and appreciate your level of commitment and passion for Art. Thank you beyond words for your hard work. I for one am endlessly excited to see and hear your work

[@AuthenticSound]

Thank you so much for the nice words Tony - and for finding this older video! -

[@jakegearhart]

I think playing in temperaments with purer thirds simply sound better. So when a piece was written to be played in a time where unequal temperaments were acceptable to the composer, I enjoy the piece most in those temperaments.

[@AuthenticSound]

unequal sounds always better than equal. Thing is for keyboard instruments you have to compromise, certainly for music that goes beyond the possibilities of UeT and after a short time, one gets used to it pretty quickly

[@yvesjeaurond4937]

For people unfamiliar with temperament, get a friend who has a recent Yamaha or Korg synth. They can be retuned to most temperaments including customized and unfamiliar such as quarter tone. They can emulate classical organs. Clavicords harpsichords very well. The temperament templates can even be applied to piano sounds. Cheers, from 2024 in Ottawa (Canada)

[@bach-ingmad9772]

In the good(?) old days when we used sundials to tell the time we accepted that noon was when the sun reached its zenith and that was twelve o'clock. The advent of accurate mechanical clocks showed that there was a deviation of up to almost seventeen minutes due to how the earth orbits the sun and rotates on its axis. We happily live with this and most people don't even realise (although you may have noticed that in the northern hemisphere in October the nights get darker quicker than the mornings as the days shorten and then in January as the days start to lengthen the evenings get light more than the mornings). So it is with temperament; the anomalies are there as the desired ratios do not add up but it is this that actually makes the music work. Trying to regularise things too much ( true equal temperament) takes away the beauty of some purer thirds and some of the effect of modulations. A good temperament should be subtle and give a smooth transition between keys and will therefore have to involve narrowing half or probably more of the fifths. Transitions between keys should be enhanced by it, as in the sun/clock analogy where the progression into winter is enhanced by nights drawing in quicker and as spring approaches the evenings lengthen more rapidly. How do we temper our keyboard then? The theories are endless as are the mathematical possibilities but if you like it then what is wrong with it? It will not be a precise theoretical temperament if tuned by ear as many people cannot tell a note is out of tune until it is approaching three cents off pitch although obviously with some chords it is easier to tell than others. The other thing is that because of the way our ears work we need to stretch the octaves slightly as we progress up the keyboard if they are to sound pure. What we hear matters more than what a tuning meter hears and therefore tuning by ear has to be preferable, although a meter can be of assistance sometimes. What did Bach use or advocate? We cannot be 100% sure and never will. Yes there are genuine clues out there and also plenty of often ingeniously and imaginatively derived ones. (Barnes, Keller, Lehman to suggest a few.) If Bach had only one temperament in mind as was trying to say that was to be used it is my belief that he would have been a bit more precise about it than a somewhat ambiguous squiggle on the WK1 title page. As well as being wonderful exercises, the 24 preludes and fugues are a test of a well tempered keyboard and if a temperament passes the test and you like it then use it. We have it on good authority that nobody could tune Bach's instruments to his satisfaction so it is safe to assume that anyone else playing his music would not have been using his temperament!

[@AuthenticSound]

Interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing ! I believe Bach had no need to clarify, because it was understood what temperament was in fashion. We today, since the reconstruction of HIP, we did a bit too much of diversification towards the existing culture, throwing away about all we could, looking back in history from our time, in stead of at least trying to look forward from before their times. Bach, I'm sure of that, would have looked very surprised hearing his WTC played in a kind of unequal temperament.

[@migueldelillo3400]

I could listen to you talking about technical details of music for hours. I'm almost constantly switching temperaments on my digital piano and I found that very soft unequal temperaments like the one you use really are the most appropriate for the music of Bach and, surprisingly, also for dodecaphonic music. I suppose it is because this "polished" temperaments give a very clean quality to intervals like minor seconds and especially fourths, intervals that in equal temperaments sound noticeably rattling. Your early recordings with the Vallotti were amazing as well (your Pathetique was explosive and I suspect the temperament was one of the reasons), but I can definitely feel an important difference now that you switched tuning. Keep doing this kind of videos, they are extremely pleasant and helpful.

[@AuthenticSound]

Thank you Miguel, so nice to read! In the Pathetique, listen to the middle section, passages with the interval Ab-C, I remember having tried so much to diminish that interval while not hurting others, but you still can hear it is too big.

[@migueldelillo3400]

Wim: when you speak about the 1707 Werkmeister temperament, are you referring to the one also known as the "septenarius", the one with the possibly wrong D? I could not find information about it and I want to try it on my digital piano. Thank you in advance.

[@therealzilch]

Temperament is like religion: the arguments go on forever because there are no right answers.

[@Renshen1957]

Ariadne musica neo-organoedum, by J.C.F. Fischer published in 1702 (reissued 1715). Ariadne musica comprised of 20 prelude-fugue pairs in ten major and nine minor keys and the Phrygian mode, plus five chorale-based ricercars. Bach knew the collection and honored Fischer work with a borrowed theme for the Eb major Fugue (WTC II) and I believe another in bk I, which I cannot recall at the present time. Johann Mattheson (1681-1764), published a work which included 48 figured bass exercises in all keys, Exemplarische Organisten-Probe (1719). I do not have time to go into J S Bach's animosity felt towards Matthesson, somewhat in reaction to another musician J M had written polemics about, whichmay have resulted in J S Bach looking back, the 1722 Title page , so wohl tertiam majorem oder Ut Re Mi anlangend, als auch tertiam minorem oder Re Mi Fa betreffend" in his terminology. J S Bach did not use those terms elsewhere or again in Bk II. I recall that J S Bach, never fulfilled a request from Mattheson for a Fugue by Bach for publication in a collection by Johann Mattheson. (Johann Mattheson criticized his former traveling companion G F Handel of plagarism in Critica Musica, Mattheson cited Handel as borrowing an aria from one of Mattheson’s own operas, as well as works by Italian composers. Handel’s practices were revealed, by one of his own librettists, Charles Jennens, who discussed in a 1743 letter how he had caught Handel “stealing” from printed collections of music, specifically referencing Scarlatti and Vinci as composers whose collections Handel had plundered.

[@robin-hr9up]

My personal viewpoint on temperament is an historical one. Many centuries ago, before the appearence of the major-minor tonic system developed, the question of temperament was not as crucial. However, as the tonic system developed, and particularly, the art of modulation, the use of multiple keys within the one piece exposed the weakness of unequal temperament as the more extreme keys were effectively 'out of tune'. My understanding of Bach's Well Tempered Keyboard was to demonstrate the advantage of equal temperament when confronted with a multiplicity of tonalities. Surely 'temperaments' are a pragmatic issue - rather than one of superstition. I remember seeing one of the modern keyboards in the Early Music Shop. It was electronic (gasp - shock - horror!!!) - and offered a selection of temperaments as well as sounds (from organ to harpsichord), chosen according to the repetoire. It was my first introduction to unequal temperament - and how effective it was in certain contexts. Temperament is surely a pragmatic choice, and that equal temperment was introduced to cope with wider key choices than hitherto met. That's life - the same way that every four years we have to make an adjustment to our calendars to cope with the fact that the year is not truly 365 days 'every' year - and that the planet Venus rotates in the opposite direction to all the other planets in the Solar System - one of God's little jokes!

[@AuthenticSound]

Great to read, thanks for sharing this with us !

[@cangjie12]

There are many recordings available now that record Bach in unequal temperament. They all sounds better than in equal temperament. That really puts the issue to rest. By the way, the distant keys of unequal temperament are not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, they are used by many composers deliberately for their dissonance. They only become problematic when playing in an ensemble, and even then only in certain parts of the music (like long held notes).

[@Clavichordist]

We promise we won't yell at you! :) We've talked about this elsewhere, but yeah as long as keys such as F-sharp or B sound okay, then the tuning is close enough and I'm happy with it. As you said, e-flat can be a bit wild if the intervals aren't quite right. Whose tuning formula do I use? Well it's my own based around the circle of fifths which are narrowed slightly. Is it perfect? No, but it's close enough not to make me feel ill. With that said, I believe that the equal temperament as you've implied here came out of necessity as the instruments themselves became more complex. Stopping a concert to tune to a different key because you've swapped pieces? When I first heard that so many years ago, I thought that was a bit absurd because as you know that does compromise the stability of the instruments. The pure tunings work well on fretted clavichords because there are just so many strings to tune compared to the individual string-pairs on an unfretted instrument. A fretted clavichord with 45-note, might have at tops 15 or 20-pairs of strings to tune where as a large instruments such as yours or mine has 120-126 strings. These large clavichords with that huge number of strings take a very long, and exhausting tuning process, to get in tune with themselves, and it doesn't help when the weather doesn't cooperate, or there is too much noise in the house! This issue I think was discovered more or less around the time that the larger unfretted clavichords came on the scene, and this roughly coincides with the more complex music of the more complex late Baroque, and Rocco and Classical periods. When we look at the music from this period, we find that Bach wasn't alone in this. His contemporaries Domenico Scarlatti and Antonio Soler, for example, were using many of the keys which Bach uses in his Well Tempered Clavier, though more restricted to the bi-part sonata form. With Scarlatti and his contemporaries, it's not unheard of to find keys such as g-flat, or b-flat, as well as F-sharp and C-sharp either in passing intervals, or as the key signature for the music. A number of years ago, at the Frederick Collection of course, I heard some Beethoven Sonatas played on the Casper Katholnig grand piano 1805-1810 period. The piano was tuned in the Werkmeister 1770s tuning. At first this sounded strange to us because of the busier harmonics, but once we got used to it, the music came alive. The intervals brought out things in the music, which go totally unnoticed when using the modern equal temperament. Anyway, a long post on a very touchy subject! :-)

[@AuthenticSound]

Thank you John for your interesting thoughts!

[@wstnli720]

Realize that in the past, most musicians had the background you have there. It was very important, for nowadays, daily life is more stressed (into a room, into an office or building) so inspiration is not the same, even for reading a page from a book. I understand better from time 12:40 on. Remember it has happened not only in Music, but in Science, other Arts and everything. Music can be performed again, so what's the problem? We are in 2017 now and the past is there to improve things. There will be always hard critics (like in literature, theatre, cinema, etc) but some experts that will be for you (agreing with you.) Lovely beautiful place, for sure. Best regards, W.

[@AuthenticSound]

tnx!

[@JoseFuentes-fn3dl]

Agreed. Music was also part of lifestyle. It was a primary form of entertainment. It was also integrated in many jobs also. Religion, music concerts were high in attendance, pianists and trio's were common playing in many business entrances everywhere.

[@leejohnson769]

The philosophical implications of temperaments (mean tone, equal, Werckmeister, etc.) are incredible with respect to Artificial Intelligence, which, I suspect, simply cannot be programmed to understand what human musicians use to tremendous advantage. Something like Louis Couperin's Tombeau on Blancrocher benefits immensely from mean tone tuning so that phrases expressing sadness sound dissonant. In equal temperament, this effect is lost. Froberger also greatly influenced Sebastian Bach, who nevertheless decided in favour of enharmonic flexibilities, given his love of chromaticism and modulations so that his "Well-Tempered" scales could do all 24 major and minor keys while no longer having the creative and dramatic contrasts of purity and dissonance in unequal tuning. I had better stop now or will go on for pages!

[@LiselotteSels]

Much appreciated!

[@AuthenticSound]

Thanks Liselotte (and I liked your surprising CPEBach on that big piano as well - a lot -really )

[@LiselotteSels]

:-) Thank you very much Wim, it was a first and probably last time - dictated by the circumstances (but you never know)

[@Renshen1957]

Vallotti published in 1779 his 167-page, four volume work, Della scienza teorica e pratica della moderna musica (On the scientific theory and practice of modern music), just before the end of his life.

[@martinbennett2228]

The clavichord is different to other keyboard instruments because slight sharpening of the tone can be achieved with additional finger pressure. Where it helps a perfect fifth is easily obtained. Isn't it a natural reaction for clavichord players to adjust the sound of chords by adjusting finger pressure? There is more to it than this because when playing the clavichord you can feel the vibration directly through your fingers.

[@AuthenticSound]

Hi Martin, that is in fact one of THE misconceptions. The temperament is in the instrument, also in a clavichord, there is no such thing as finger pressure controlled pitch. Yes, the pitch raises when you press deeper, and in fact, measured with a digital device, you would notice that difference constantly, but it is, or should not, be within hearing range. Think about it this way: if pitch/temperament were to be adjusted while playing, it would be extremely difficult (so many voices!) + it would be hard for the listener, hearing all the notes slowly go up ! best! Wim

[@evanprest6224]

This is one of my favorite topics! Thank you for addressing! Too bad I am tone deaf, or I could enjoy it even more.

[@AuthenticSound]

Thanks Evan, I'm gonna address this more in the future, also basic tuning videos

[@JoseFuentes-fn3dl]

I have an unrelated question. What do you recommend for sight reading practice? Thank you.

[@DaveMuller]

The only thing missing was a scotch and pipe. Keep up the awesome videos :)

[@AuthenticSound]

Is a Belgian beer ok for you :-)?

What is your favourite beer? I love Rochefort 10.

[@robin-hr9up]

+Krešimir Cindrić That's cheese - n'est pas?

It's beer. Google it.

[@DaveMuller]

Yeah beer will do, as long as is from a Steiner with a fancy coaster. Or a tawny. It will add +3 to your wisdom.

[@paqman67]

Dear Mr. Winters, I was wondering if you had heard of Dr. Lehman's "Bach" tuning which he surmises where hidden in the Well Tempered Clavier's title page? Here's a link to a piece played in that tuning, it does make the pieces he plays sound wonderful and "different" from "regular" tuning: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qnTEf39mjKaoiZo

[@AuthenticSound]

Thanks Francisco, for watching and sharing your thoughts here with us ! As with any practical temperament, it is up to the tuner to make a beautiful and singing instrument with it, and not one instrument will sound exactly the same, not one player will tune it exactly the same, which is the exciting thing about this. Having said all this, it is rather clear from the 'sources' what temperament was in fashion in those days, and unless Bach would have been totally separate to the tradition he lived in and created, he used that Werckmeister 1707 as well for his more complex pieces as many of his solo music is. I often wonder why people want to look in the dark corners for evidence that is for grab out in the light... There is for sure not one single clue in the title page, reason symbolically why I choose it as a background for the thumbnail. There were much less things mysterious than we today would like to believe... not saying that that temperament can have its beautiful corners, but, and that is rather rare to hear me say this, I'm for a 100% certain that the theory around is is nothing more than -wonderful created - fantasy.

[@RicardoMarlowFlamenco]

No need for heavy research there… just listen to music in E major or B major. Awful. No way Bach would accept that. Evidence says he was really against the methods of his day, hence tuning all his own instruments. And evidence he would point out problems in Ab major on famous organs etc. tells me he was clearly pro equal temp. Nothing else even makes sense. Perhaps even he did not advocate Werkmeister in the sense he wanted it even closer to Equal temp…that would explain why he tuned everything himself, but nothing else lesser equal than at least Werkmeister would make any darn sense.

[@amezcuaist]

If unequal temperaments became a problem when playing in an ensemble --does that include playing in/with an orchestra ? How about playing in a violin , piano duet. ? A violin or an orchestra do not play in Equal temperament . These attempts at pushing ET always fall flat on their faces .

[@AuthenticSound]

Really? Orchestras didn't play in C sharp as one has to with the WTC. Do some research first before thinking an opinion is enough (really take it as an advice)

[@sofiewinters667]

Die foto papa!!!!!!

[@AuthenticSound]

fantastisch... :-)