Видео

Thanks for your kind feedback! I also have been following your suggestion with great organ works - which are a great inspiration to study the structures and the musical meaning. Regarding _this_ piece, the tempo is a great question for me. Organists tend to play this prelude fast, the Francoise-Green piano duet plays the two piano transcription even a bit more slowly than here. Too pity that we have no recording of this with György and Márta Kurtág, as far as I know, to get the hint of his tempo idea. And not a recording with Bach, of course... :)

I didn't know about this, thanks for sharing. I'm glad that some people (and more and more people as I see) appreciate the beauty of these old temperaments.

@@historicalpiano Here it is: v=3d85BW_ZUs0

Thank you! :)

This is a Viennese action, and its developed form (this means that hammers for the longer strings are larger - in earlier versions, they were of the same size). Viennese action is very much different from the English action in present day standard pianos. In the Viennese action, the hammer is directly on the key, you have kind of "in your hand" the hammer while playing. It has more colors therefore. The coating is leather, which leads to a characteristic sound quality. In general, you here "inhomogeneity", thus, the tembre changes with the pitch gradually, so the voices in different positions (octaves etc.) have their distinct colors (kind of: orchestration!). Contemporary pianos aim homogeneity, reproducibility, and loudness - so does the equal temperament. So, these colors that the composers did use as composition elements are kind of lost by our days, and you have to have an old piano to revive them!

This is the temperament that I learned from the piano on that Brahms plays the 1st Hungarian dance (also in g minor, but it makes no sense because the temperament is characteristic to a piano for a long time - you cannot change the temperament from piece to piece, of course). So it is documented to have been used at the time of the later Romanticism. It is somewhere between Kirnberger II and Kirnberger III in strength, roughly, the G-D-A-E fifths are tempered with 1/3 comma. It is a somewhat molled version of this (probably Brahms's piano also has a molled version). In this specific temperament, C major is almost pure, it has a pure fifth and a close-to pure third; and e minor chord is also very close to be pure. A major, f minor are known to be "spicy" in all temperaments (as the rule of thumb, these are to be "sacrified" for the sake of purity of other scales). But it is not known that g minor is also _very_ strange in temperaments, just because of the basic rules! Anyhow you want to keep clean the C-E third, you _must_ temper the G-D fifth to be very flat, and the B flat - D third to be quite wide. So, what you hear here is the actual, real, factual g minor, with its all colors! It is strange, it is unpleasant, it is fearful, it has discomfort and distress, and some very black, lightless color. Even in milder temperaments (as this one is), g minor is strong. It is strong always. Just recall Mozart's two g minor symphonies, Haydn's g minor string quartet, or... simply Chpoin's other g minor nocturne - this is it. The middle section, in E flat major is also a strange, vibrating modality, and we have A flat major and c-f minor colors in it -- a stunning palette of musical colors! It is a great loss that we do not here these in equal temperaments, but this is exactly why I am experimenting with the uneven temperaments here, especially those that can be verified musico-historically!

@@historicalpiano I understand well. Thank you very much. Stanhope is also popular with similar tunings.

Why is it bad? You can find Mr and Ms Kurtág playing this piece on youtube, _exactly_ in this tempo.

There are 2 Kirnberger II 1871 Kirnberger II 1876

Sorry, I have noticed your request just now. It's not measured in Hz values, but the deviations in cents from the equal temperament. (One cent is 1/100 of an equally tempered minor second.) My favourite temperament after much experimentation is follows. We have two accords and three intervals to remember. 1. The notes in the accord D - E flat - A flat are kept the same as in equal temperament (0 cent deviation). 2. The notes in the accord C sharp - F sharp - B natural are a bit flattened (-4 cent). 3. Interval C-G. both pitches are tuned much higher than in equal temperament (7 cent for both, may be even +8 or +9 cent for G). 4. Interval F - B flat. Both notes are tuned a bit higher than equal temperament (+4 cent). 5. Interal E-A. These notes are tuned very low (-7 cent). So in essence: D - E flat - A flat - kept "as is" in equal temperament C sharp - F sharp - B natural a bit low F - B flat - a bit high E - A - much lower C - G much higher. Where a bit means + or - 4 cent, much means 7 cents (can be 9 for G as an exception). And it just sounds beautifully!

@@historicalpiano Very interesting. Would be awesome to have info in Hertz , I'm not really a pro.

Thank you! I am using a Korg Triton sound generator and a Casio digital piano as a MIDI input. My good old historical piano (with non-crossing strings, 1882) is just on the way (and around autumn it will be at us).

Yes, of course, why not? The point is that composers, even Bartók in the early years (until let's say the 1926 "piano year"), composed for uneven temperaments like the this, or the other ones. I have just uploaded another video where you can hear Kodály in a modified Kirnberger temperament, which is even a bit stronger than what we hear here, and it sounds very well. (Much better than on equal temperament.) So you can play "later music" on "old" temperaments, because composers did write for "old temperaments". Especially the Bach-Lehmann is an exceptional temperament because E major triad is almost Pythagorean (the widest, most vibrating), and going farther and into the b-ish tonalities, the vibrations are somehow relaxed. B flat major is quite close to pure. Most of other temperaments "sacrify" the A flat major instead of E major, and A flat major is the most vibrating temperament, with the most tension. (Can you tell a single Mozart composition in A flat major? OK, I can, but not more than one. But no Couperin, Rameau, etc.etc., and A flat major has become popular only after Beethoven - who was deaf enough to not to hear what tense it has! - and Chopin, Schubert, who made use of these vibrations, but also, used a bit molled temperament where A flat major is also beautiful.) So in essence, the answer is a "yes", you can plan in any tonalities with Bach-Lehman, and you can try any music from later epochs. You surely get amazingly better results than in equal temperament. But the answer is also a "not that much", because Kirnberger, Young and other temperaments are even better suited to the other composers, Bach-Lehman is a uniqueness of Bach WTC.

Thanks for your interest and question! Based on the figure to the right, the shifts can be calculated in any "reference system". If you start with equal temperament, the note shifts are the following in cex values (1 cex = 1/100th of a half note; + means the note is tempered higher than in equal): C +6 cex C# -4 D +4 Eb 0 E -4 F +6 F# -4 G 8 Ab -2 A 0 Bb 4 H -4

I think not really much. The advantage of this temperament is that C and G minors, and E and B minor trriads are absolutely clean, so a piece in C major is optimal to be performed in this temperament. But D and A major has a very stringent "col legno" color because of the diminished fiths. Thus, if you are playing in D major, d minor etc., the natural modulations occur a so significant change of the atmosphere that the acoustic consistency is in harm. Here in this piece, around 11:20 there is a modulation to C minor, with significant change of the color, but here it is not a problem because this modulation is "far": we eventually notice that something happened without learning harmony studies! More widely they used Kirnberger III, where we have no clean major triad (the major third of C is clean, but the fifth is diminished, the other thirds are too wide), but the transition between neighbouring tonalities is acoustically smooth and pleasing. You still hear much difference, but not inconsistency. You can hear an example for this temperament here and I wish to add more ones in the close future: ruclips.net/video/gjPLRP5ztmw/видео.html I also experimented with a compromise (call it Kirnberger 2.5) where the G, D, A fifths are diminished by 1/3 comma, so C major triad is absolutelly clean (so does E minor). In this temperament som modulations are still to harsh, but if we diminish fifths beyond A, with the cost of widening a bit the fifths near A flat you get a pleasing and colorful temperament with quite smooth modulations everywhere. Sound examples are to come later! :)

HistoricalTemperaments thank you for the detailed reply. I’m starting to experiment with unequal tuning on my own piano (I asked my tuner to set KII) and so far I like what I hear but now I’m wondering how accurate it is (I heard the stiffness you mentioned and I wonder if that was intentional or a side effect of the temperament used). I would like to try any temperament you point me out to, I’m really interested in the colour idea and how this gives music a new dimension. Your videos on this topic are super useful for me. If you had to choose one temperament to play from baroque to romantic music which one would you choose? (I really want to have and experiment the richness of tonal colour). Thank you so much for your help and I hope I’m not abusing of your time. Cheers.

Oh! What I surely would not recommend is the Young or Vallotti, which are popular, but too gray for erlier music. If you already have KII, it is easy to relax it to KIII, you can give it a try. My favorite is however, the one that I invented :) based on KIII, taken French ord and Rameau into account in "philosophy". This is rich in colour, all major thirds are at least as compensated as Pythagorean, C major is the clearest, and an advantage, the fifth of the C major is also clear. Far tonalities such as A flat major and f minor have a very spicy but still pleasant color. This is an example, mostly for F major and f minor (first nocturne) and g minor and E flat major (hear how shiny it is!) in the second nocturne. You can decode the temperament circle but if you wish, I can send you exactly the offsets that I tuned, in respect to equal temperament tomorrow. ruclips.net/video/e51opyEtvWU/видео.html