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Re: Disagreement with Mozart?



Mark,

Playing Mozart in meantone tuning is certainly wrong in more 
than one respect -- but that mistake has beautiful consequences. 
On organs, harmonicas etc., "Ave verum corpus", e.g., in meantone 
tuning is even more beautiful than it is in ET. For listeners with 
undamaged outer hair cells, the difference is quite impressive.

Most solo singers, and many choir singers, however, apply vibrato,
with pitch variation of ~50 cents, so that the differences between 
meantone and ET are unimportant. Good vibrato-less choir singers 
of a given part differ from each other by typically 10 cents; it is 
because of these differences that large choirs sound so beautiful; 
so the ET-meantone-just differences are fairly unimportant for
vibrato-less choirs, too.

See my book "Meantone Is Beautiful", available via Amazon or via 
the publisher, www.peterlang.com.


With best wishes,

Reinhart.

----Ursprüngliche Nachricht--------------------
Von: mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Datum: 26.11.2009 10:23
An: <reinifrosch@xxxxxxxxxx>
Kopie: <AUDITORY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Betreff: Re: [AUDITORY] Disagreement with Mozart?

What exactly is your disagreement with Mozart?
I think the problem is trying to play Mozart using meantone. I assume  
his singers would have attempted just intonation rather than a fixed  
temperament.
Best,
Mark
---------------------------------------------------
Reinhart Frosch,
Dr. phil. nat.,
r. PSI and ETH Zurich,
Sommerhaldenstr. 5B,
CH-5200 Brugg.
Phone: 0041 56 441 77 72.
Mobile: 0041 79 754 30 32.
E-mail: reinifrosch@xxxxxxxxxx .