The transition back into the main theme at 16:15 after the build-up beginning at 16:03 is the most perfectly and wonderfully I've ever heard it executed.
Absolutely wonderful, this is how LvB meant it to sound. And I love it, the raw exactness that he composed it for. It is at this time he, in his desperation, wrote the heiligenstadt testament.
What an interesting perspective and reference. Thanks so much. I've believed not in merely accepting established opinions but in doing the experiments and it's such a privilege to have had the honour to work with such musicians.
I’m a lover of baroque repertoire but always I’ve felt a deep fascination for Beethoven, Gluck and Haydn language. Also for historic instruments and his variety of sound, aesthetics and the possibilities bringed to the musicians into rediscover manners to sound, manners to feel and detail the music. I’m so excited and happy to see that more and more people use nice historical pianos. Is a hole new world to discover feelings.
There are some feelings that cannot be captured without dissonance. The swirling chaos and power revealed during certain passages is bone chilling. Certain intervals stomp through the harmony leaving destruction in their wake. If the pianist is allowed to interpret the written score, why would that not extend to the temperament of the instrument? Regardless of your position on the historical viability of this particular tuning, you cannot deny that it is an integral part of the flavor of this performance. I loved it.
It would be great to hear this in HD. 🙏🏻 I love the sound of this instrument. Early pianos have their own charms and special effects. I don’t by any means miss the sound of the modern piano here. 👏🏻
Im simply not educated enough to discern the differences caused by tuning. What I can hear is the contact. Beethoven played his instrument with his full ability, and at the time they were simply instruments- not collector pieces. I fully believe Beethoven wrote his music with the physical dynamics and tactile sound of the fortepiano in mind. “To play a wrong note is insignificant, to play without passion is inexcusable.” How can we ignore the fortepiano in context? The fortepiano responds to passionate and emotional playing like no other instrument. Its so sensitive and clear that every nuance is magnified. When beethoven wanted to shout, he shouted into his fortepiano and when he wanted to whisper, he no doubt whispered through his fortepiano. Music is about expression, and we cannot fully appreciate the written instructions for Beethoven’s musical expression without the proper medium. Play his music through the piano and see how it hums along. All I know is that the fortepiano actually speaks the music with control and separation of sound. The ultimate goal shouldnt be the largest resonance, dissonance is just as important to the sound.
Your observation is spot on but you don't have to be educated to discern differences caused by tuning. This recording is using an extreme tuning, the 18th century tuning, and it works, as you say, creating dissonance which is part of the music. ruclips.net/video/wjPDefnPQNU/видео.html is on an 1819 Broadwood like Beethoven's of the time, and ruclips.net/video/3xgi7U71Ehk/видео.html and ruclips.net/video/vOQ6O7PD_yc/видео.html is on instruments of 1854 and 1859 where dissonance is less apparent in less strong and modern tunings. Move to wholly modern tuning on a modern instrument and you get ruclips.net/video/RUNWy8H2EHU/видео.html
This strong mesotonic temperament will confuse ears used to the standard of equal temperament. It offers sublime sounds and shows this work in a new form.
My ears are not used to equal temperament, I hear and play a lot of music in various variants of meantone, well-temperaments and microtonal tunings. I also listen a lot to middle eastern and indian music. But ... ... the "sublime sounds" that this recording has to offer are nothing but out of tune. Whoever claims to appreciate this performance is worshipping the emperor without clothes. Important note to anyone who is really curious to understand meantone temperament: Please do not believe that this is how meantone is supposed to sound!
@@jakegearhart This performance contains a lot of completely wrong notes because enharmonic notes are different notes in meantone temperament and therefore, it is not possible to perform this piece in meantone on a 12-note-per-octave keyboard. Doing so therefore results in a ridiculously ugly sound, as this video proves. A sonorous chord here or there doesn't change this.
@@nafets9807 Just because you replace a major third with an augmented second doesn't mean the music is unplayable. It's interpretation. Some parts sound good, some parts sound worse, it's just interpretation. I like it more than equal temperament, because I'd rather have in-tune augmented seconds than equal temperament thirds.
Upon being asked what the sonata meant, Beethoven responded "read Shakespeare". It's in this context that the play en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest may be of interest and the use of meantone here adds to the mysterious and supernatural atmosphere at times.
Incredible! I greatly appreciate the strain and tension that meantone brings to this piece. With enough time the ear can accept quite a bit of dissonance and grow to even enjoy it. What a refreshing sound to hear after so many thousands of hours of listening to equal temperament.
I played it for my class after playing Daniel Barenboim's version on a contemporary instrument. The musicianship of the individual is second to none, however the instrument makes me appreciate our modern instruments! Not to speak disparaging about Beethoven, but on the contrary he and is contemporaries deserve a great deal of credit for becoming accomplished on an instrument like this.
To those who wonder our sanity at trying a Meantone temperament - www.peterlang.com/view/title/60733?tab=aboutauthor "Meantone is beautiful!" by Reinhart Frosch
Aah - this is experimental and quite fun. Meantone is a shock to the ears but when one's used to it, it expresses. Try ruclips.net/video/rfqhL7UaB3Y/видео.html ruclips.net/video/p4NpeoNpDOA/видео.html and especially ruclips.net/video/rzrIWR3s84Q/видео.html . F minor was the key of the grave. Perhaps now you can hear it!
1/6, or 1/4 comma...? It does not sound so awfully harsh, that is why I ask, but maybe it is just because d minor is not such a dark tonality, like c minor, f minor or e flat minor And I would be curious to hear it on 1/3 comma, maybe on the harpsichord or clavichord
"Many instruments of this date would have been tuned to meantone" Not pianos or harpsichords or clavichords. CPE Bach (Beethoven's musical grandfather) already recommended a near-equal temperament usable in all 24 major and minor keys - with the warning that some *organs* would still be tuned in meantone and so not be available for free modulation. "how far we can go chronologically with Beethoven's work before the use of Meantone becomes impossible" Op.2/1 his first piano sonata will already be horrible due to its cantabile passages in Ab major etc. Op.13 (Pathetique) ditto, the famous Adagio in Ab major Op.26, a whole sonata in Ab major, ditto Op.27/1 (Eb Fantasia) has an Adagio in Ab major Op.27/2 (Moonlight) in C# minor and major All before Op.31 Not to mention Beethoven's teacher Haydn's many pieces in Ab major or equally 'remote' keys. Nothing is impossible, you can put your fingers on keys and produce sounds if you like but many things will be damned unmusical. So are you going to play Op.2/1, the slow movement of Op.13, or the scherzo of Op.27/1 in meantone some time? Yes if most of a piece is in D minor you will avoid *most* of the unmusicality, but most Beethoven pieces are not in D minor.
Yes - on all sorts of levels I agree. But this was an experiment. Percy Scholes asked the question "How would Bach's 48 have been able to be played on Dr Burney's keyboard". So the question of how music would have been received in England is valid. "A Treatise on teh Art of Pianoforte Construction" by Samual Wolfenden written in the 1920s recounts how tuners in his youth, so presumably 1870s/80s were then still debating where to put the "wolf". So Meantone was alive and well until quite a late period and experiments on how music was received are therefore of interest. In my opinion this experiment with The Tempest is revealing. . .
@@unequally-tempered In the Victorian Era, most temperaments that were manufactured from fractions of the comma had gone out of fashion, and the wolf interval would only be a leftover; the thirds would not represent the normal shape of meantone temperaments. This variety of meantone is not period accurate, but there were varieties of meantone that were used during the time of Beethoven's early compositions. John Preston's equal-beating well mimics the shape of meantone very closely. In it, Ab is sharp but still very usable, although the good thirds are not too obviously better than equal-temperament. www.rollingball.com/images/PrestonEB.gif Since Beethoven had gone deaf early in his career, he would have probably been less affected by the difficulties of well temperament.
@@mantictac Yes - very interesting thoughts. There may have been regional variations of tuning practise. The "Treatise on the Art of Pianoforte Construction" by Samuel Wolfenden is worth reading. p133: "The system of temperament, by which some of the more used keys were favoured at the expense of others, had not long given place to the present plan when the writer had his first experience as a tuner, and there were still some middle aged and elderly men, who were not able to adjust their minds and working habits to the new demands, and to whom the location of "the wolf" was a serious matter". Thanks to Ben Marks for drawing this to my attention. Whatever might be argued one way or another, this recording puts the music under an X-Ray showing up things otherwise rather subtle and not as obviously heard ordinarily, making the link with the plot of Shakespeare it.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_tempesta incontrovertible.
Wasn't Meantone very out of date by this time even starting to become outmoded in Bach's days, replaced with well/unequal temperaments? Unequal temperaments like Werckmeister get rid of the wolf intervals, which I think you can hear in this recording.
Yes - I would agree but Percy Scholes asked the question "How would Bach's 48 have been able to be played on Dr Burney's keyboard". So the question of how music would have been received in England is valid. "A Treatise on the Art of Pianoforte Construction" by Samual Wolfenden written in the 1920s recounts how tuners in his youth, so presumably 1870s/80s were then still debating where to put the "wolf". So Meantone was alive and well until quite a late period and experiments on how music was received are therefore of interest. In my opinion this experiment with The Tempest is revealing. . . and expressive. Listening to Meantone is rather like an x-ray in bringing forward sounds that we can overlook in more civilised tunings in which they may express as nuances.
Late Renaissance and early Baroque sounds fine and authentic with 1/4 comma meantone temperament. Some JS Bach pieces do as well. Mozart, Haydn and early Beethoven sound great on well or equal tempered harpsichord and clavichord, not just piano. Of course, I'm judging by modern hearing.
@@nicochin3 Thanks so much for your compliment. I think it's important to do the experiments, to take the witness statements from the music, from the instruments and from examining them through the lens of the vibrations of tuning. ruclips.net/video/kh485E_NZeQ/видео.html as part of ruclips.net/video/bt-ttLY5ex8/видео.html goes to the root of our assumptions about modern equal temperament tuning. Beethoven Op 39 in all major keys is at ruclips.net/video/bt-ttLY5ex8/видео.html&t=4210s . We have to ask why he gave focus to and paused on the hideous chord of A flat near the end. Was this piece celebrating key characteristics? Exploring the different tonalities of each key . . . in meantone, or an unequal temperament in which all keys were playable . . . or in a revelation in a change to equal temperament. This piece as Opus 17 is interesting in its communication through the tuning of the 18th century, but Opus 39 apparently was composed in 1789. unheardbeethoven.org/search.php?Identifier=opus39 So much of the written documentation is in variance that we cannot start to reach any conclusions without listening to the music itself through the different lenses we have at our disposal.
What's it like playing on a piano that doesn't have double escapement also called (I think) "repetitive action" by the New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Were you able to go full tempo with it?
This is how instruments of the time were. The hammers were covered in leather with much lighter, less moving mass, so can move faster than modern hammers. The modern heavy actions are quite wrong and lead to insensitive playing.
@@unequally-tempered I dislike heavy actions for sure. But on this piano the key has to be all the way up or it wont sound which would make playing repetitive notes quite difficult. This is a pretty good recording. I doubt the hammers move faster or it would be a difficult to compare. Cause a modern steinway puts the hammers very close to the strings.
Werkmeister III is pretty good, but it keeps telling you it's there. Kirnberger is more transparent, and greatly superior to equal temperament for music of this period and earlier. This excellent programme rules mean tone out. Wonderful piano.
Yes - although we are under the illusion that music should always sound "nice". Being fed up of such, people like Stockhausen had to smash nice music with a sledgehammer, but perhaps meantone shows that dissonance was already built in and there, if anyone tuned it that way and opened up by choice of key. Here's Kirnberger III ruclips.net/video/wjPDefnPQNU/видео.html and here ruclips.net/video/AHAZjcPmtrs/видео.html Meantone demonstrating its value as an emotiometer.
Yes - in part. But it's the tuning. With good tuning the Steinway can be expressive ruclips.net/video/4dCQyD57e9M/видео.html and were I to tune Kirnberger III or Meantone it would be even more-so. It's the tuning as much as the instrument. The piano in this video is, however, the very nearest instrument to the harpischord that I've experienced in the progression of the piano from its predecessor instrument.
Mesotonic temperament is not appropriate for Beethoven, nor is there historical evidence to suggest that he would have preferred anything other than equal temperament. Furthermore, Broadwood at that time was quite clear that the continental composers all preferred and required equal temperament - and he knew many of them personally and tuned for them. Yes, the pure thirds sound good, but the diminished fourths (G# C, for instance), sound horribly out of tune, and would have to Beethoven.
Yes this is the established opinion. But it's important to do the experiment. Here it works and it reveals something interesting. In correspondence in the "Monthly Magazine" of 1811 between James Broadwood and John Farey it becomes clear that Broadwood's method of tuning "Equal Temperament" was anything but equal. In the confusion of written records it's important to take the witness statement of the music itself as I have with ruclips.net/video/bt-ttLY5ex8/видео.html and as did Enid Katahn some 20 years ago. Some time ago there was an article suggesting that Vallotti was much more widespread on the continent and persisted for much longer than assumed. Through CPE Bach, Haydn and the Moravian and Masonic connexions there is reason to explore the use and travel of Kirnberger temperament using 7 perfect fifths rather than 6 as with Vallotti. Percy Scholes asked how it was possible for Bach's 48 to have been played on Dr Burney's piano which only 20 years before this was tuned to meantone. In the Mozart presentation I've demonstrated that it was possible, but it requires a delicacy and understanding. www.academia.edu/37951978/THE_COLOUR_OF_MUSIC_IN_MOZARTS_TIME_A_journey_from_Couperin_to_Chopin_Examination_of_reconstruction_of_Mozart_Fantasias_K594_and_K608_for_Mechanical_Clock Dr Burney and his contemporaries documented the need for good musicians to be able to distinguish between major and minor semitones. These are all sounds which have been obliterated by modern piano tuning which has brought mechanical uniformity that which we experience in music and has obliterated the dimensions beyond soft-loud, fast-slow and resulted in loss of communication of music. It has become a circus act, how fast, how loud, how loud how fast and is that note in the right place . . . a circus act, entertainment only, so optional. Without meaning, teaching is collapsing and music is no longer regarded as essential, a cultural necessity as valuable as Shakespeare. In this recording of Beethoven we hear Shakespeare directly at work.
@@unequally-tempered Yes, John Farey wrote a response, from a "scientific" point of view, "proving" that the directions James Shudi Broadwood had provided were not, in fact, a recipe for precise ET. That is really not a proof that the Broadwoods were not telling the truth: that the composers and performers of their time wanted a fully circular temperament that was "reasonably equal." What is absolutely clear is that they did not want mean tone. If you happen to find that playing Beethoven in mean tone is somehow enlightening, that is certainly your privilege, and I have nothing to say against it. However, you should not go farther and say that this somehow "proves" that this is what Beethoven was after. The historic evidence is quite clear that it was not, that in Germany in particular ET was next to universal by 1750, long before Beethoven was born, and the only other tuning that was mentioned as an alternative was Kirnberger's - not the one he wrote privately to Forkel, but the original revised Kirnberger, in which he decided that maybe he should divide his wolf fifth in the middle of the white key fifths into two. I certainly don't expect to persuade you, but it is quite clear from all historic evidence that at the very least, mean tone is entirely inappropriate to Beethoven. I'm not a dilettante in these matters, but have thoroughly studied original sources. You may read the published results of my research here www.artoftuning.com/tuning-history/ should you care to. Best regards
@@FredSturm1 Yes - thanks. Meantone is certainly not suitable for all Beethoven and I'm not saying so. What I'm saying here is that when we put it through the lens of meantone, rather like an IR filter in photography, the sound of this piece links us directly to the mysterious world of the Shakespeare play to which Beethoven referred. There are interesting questions and interesting assumptions which ought to be explored and Equal Temperament as we tune it today was certainly not in universal use. In the organ world many people stuck to meantone right through to the Victorian period. For less extreme effects temperaments with perfect fifths had the advantage of being easy to tune and provide circulating facilities through all keys. They are not all the same but many give similar effects. I've demonstrated in the case of Mozart that his works for mechanical clock exploited the tuning to achieve an intended effect, and that the piano sonatas come alive when in Meantone and convey Masonic philosophy. We miss all of that with modern ET performance. Kirnberger III hints towards meantone and is useful for a more universal temperament still producing chromaticism, colour. ET has killed colour. Most certainly Haydn's variations in F minor and Mozart's Ah! vous dirai je maman lose their soul in Equal Temperament and for this reason it's important to take the witness statements of the music into account in assessment of the written record. Even coming through to Brahms listening through the lens of an unequal temperament ruclips.net/video/p7AoF3zvcaI/видео.html has a profound and important effect. What people wrote, did, and heard may not have been entirely the same. With declining perception of relevance of music to ordinary people it's really necessary to do the experiments to see and hear exactly where assumptions have been, and possibly to steer a different path in order to bring the emotional content of the music back into the consciousness. Without it we have merely Japanese and Chinese mechanical repetition because the feeling inherent in the sound, the vibrations, the tuning, has been obliterated. Four other factors are relevant - (1) modern man-in-the-street audiences don't have the refinement of listening and perception that perhaps a more widely musically educated audience might have had in the previous centuries. If there were musical subtleties written into the music by means of chromatic interaction with the tuning, we have to use a stronger flavour of temperament for people now to be able to hear it. That's demonstrated well by this Beethoven performance in Meantone. (2) Pianos after the 1870s developed a much more prominent 5th harmonic and there was a commercial advantage to be had in tuning such instruments to a pure Equal Temperament. The glistening effect sold pianos and created worship of the brand rather than how the brand interpreted the music. Pianos before this date had a more prominent 3rd harmonic, the 5th often being absent, and so a less fixed vision of temperament is indicated. (3) When many notes of the scale are tuned to the 3rd harmonic of lower notes resonance of the instrument is enhanced and this may have been relevant in the development of acoustic power. (4) In the Mozart paper www.academia.edu/37951978/THE_COLOUR_OF_MUSIC_IN_MOZARTS_TIME_A_journey_from_Couperin_to_Chopin_Examination_of_reconstruction_of_Mozart_Fantasias_K594_and_K608_for_Mechanical_Clock I recorded the comment by Orde-Hume that barrel organs which had not been altered from the 18th century were tuned to a scale "which made one wince" and that "it was intended to". This is reason enough to examine music composed from that period in such a scale tuned so as to be intended to make one wince.
@@unequally-tempered I have nothing against experimenting with unequal tunings, but my impression you are simply an adherent of what is essentially a religion of "anything but ET," and that you lack respect for and understanding of history. Why did ET end up being essentially universal in the west (at least until the fad of UET in the second half of the 20th century)? Because composers wanted to write in such a way that they explored keys in a completely free manner, not needing to worry about avoiding particular intervals and keys. ET is simply a compromise that works quite well - and it works well whether it is executed very precisely or relatively sloppily. I have done my own experimentation. As a piano technician at a university, one year I changed my tunings from ET to various UETs, without announcing it, to see what feedback I would get. I did get a small number of complaints from the more extreme tunings I had tried, and pulled back to milder forms. I had no other comments, either during that experimental year or the following year when I reverted to ET without notice. I did tell three or four faculty what I was doing, and they simply couldn't hear it, couldn't tell what the differences were even when I pointed them out. My conclusion from that, and from many, many other experiences over the course of 40 years has convinced me that the precise shape of temperament has a very low level of importance in the larger scheme of music. Musicians playing instruments that aren't fixed pitch produce approximate pitches, and they have to be quite far off (from the point of view of a piano tuner) before anyone notices and complains. Be that as it may, I have no problem with people finding something new about a piece by listening to it in a different context, though I think that for piano, the difference between 20th, mid 19th, early 19th, late 18th century instruments is FAR more revealing than tuning. As to my original comment, it is clear that Beethoven would not accept a mean tone tuning for the simple reason that he wanted the black keys to be usable enharmonically. When he wrote A flat, he wanted it to sound "in tune." He did not write so that D flat, A flat, and G flat, D#, and A#, and the various double sharps and flats were intended to sound raucous in context with the other notes. That's the bottom line. Circularity is an absolute must for Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Brahms, essentially all major composers after Baroque and many of them during parts of the Baroque - especially in Germany. I'm afraid that your "Proof by what sounds right to me" approach doesn't convince me in the least, especially when it ignores a plethora of documentary evidence to the contrary. But to each his own.
@@FredSturm1 My work is far from a lack of respect for history. Circularity was not an absolute must for Mozart for a start - he worked in specific and limited keys and at the other end of the period I've demonstrated Brahm's Violin sonatas to exhibit the calm of the mirror smooth lake at Tun which inspired it when it's tuned to a circular unequal temperament. The evidence for pure equal temperament, often pushed by the piano manufacturers who had a vested interest, goes against the grain of an increasing corpus of scholarship such as zapdoc.tips/the-influence-of-unequal-temperament-on-chopin-s-piano-works.html together with the chronology of scholarship to which I've referred in my Mozart paper. The experience of tuning for musicians is interesting. Bad musicians who play mechanically and often hitting the keys and not listening to the sound don't notice the difference but good musicians can revel in the soundscape. It's this indifference to the sound, to the vibrations, the emotion, that has led to purely mechanical playing and music being reduced to the circus act, entertainment, rather than the literature of the status of Shakespeare. It's this that has reduced music to being very optional and marginal and budgets in education being cut very drastically with music as a luxury being one of the first subjects to disappear. The true meaning of the Chromatic Scale is now so removed from music that the Wikipedia article fails even to give a nod to it other than the mechanical movement through semitones. ruclips.net/video/qdsFLIo9l88/видео.html ruclips.net/video/A34K-fj5nHs/видео.html ruclips.net/video/XpqrynlohR4/видео.html being the Chopin preludes in all 24 keys demonstrate the effect of a good circulating temperament and that the audiences do really hear a difference. Likewise ruclips.net/video/hgA1-I5MfNY/видео.html demonstrated by the comment from A Yuu. It's been a privilege to have been able to work with musicians willing to experiment and who are virtuosic and expert enough both to hear and to exploit the difference. It's also of relevance that pianos such as this 1802 instrument rely on resonance to increase their power and this is enhanced when notes of the scale are tuned as many as possible to harmonics of the strings. This has an effect upon available pedalling techniques noted in early scores both of Beethoven and of Chopin.
1. mvt 3 should've been the Westworld soundtrack. 2. 5:30 is like... a total rip off of Benny and the Jets... Elton would turn in his grave. 3. You'd think this guy had to be deaf to tolerate this intonation. 4. JK this performance is truly incredible- it completely turns my ears upside down in the best possible way. Beautiful.
Haha! Yes! And if it's right that Beethoven told his publisher to read Shakespeare simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest it.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_tempesta then perhaps Beethoven might have liked it this way too!
It's meant to be - and it suggests Beethoven really did intend his comment "Read Shakespeare". Try ruclips.net/video/wjPDefnPQNU/видео.html for an alternative.
Upon being asked what the sonata meant, Beethoven responded "read Shakespeare". It's in this context that the play en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest may be of interest and the use of meantone here adds to the mysterious and supernatural atmosphere at times.
The transition back into the main theme at 16:15 after the build-up beginning at 16:03 is the most perfectly and wonderfully I've ever heard it executed.
See what you think on ruclips.net/video/wjPDefnPQNU/видео.html
Absolutely wonderful,
this is how LvB meant it to sound.
And I love it, the raw exactness that he composed it for.
It is at this time he, in his desperation, wrote the heiligenstadt testament.
What an interesting perspective and reference. Thanks so much. I've believed not in merely accepting established opinions but in doing the experiments and it's such a privilege to have had the honour to work with such musicians.
I’m a lover of baroque repertoire but always I’ve felt a deep fascination for Beethoven, Gluck and Haydn language. Also for historic instruments and his variety of sound, aesthetics and the possibilities bringed to the musicians into rediscover manners to sound, manners to feel and detail the music. I’m so excited and happy to see that more and more people use nice historical pianos. Is a hole new world to discover feelings.
There are some feelings that cannot be captured without dissonance. The swirling chaos and power revealed during certain passages is bone chilling. Certain intervals stomp through the harmony leaving destruction in their wake. If the pianist is allowed to interpret the written score, why would that not extend to the temperament of the instrument? Regardless of your position on the historical viability of this particular tuning, you cannot deny that it is an integral part of the flavor of this performance. I loved it.
I thanks You very much for this recording. For the First time I had the occasion to listen to this piece of music ft
Thanks. Try same pianist, different pianos with ruclips.net/video/wjPDefnPQNU/видео.html and ruclips.net/video/t-nvS5m8cko/видео.html
This is an impressive and revelatory performance.
I.00:06 II.07:10 III.14:16
It would be great to hear this in HD. 🙏🏻 I love the sound of this instrument. Early pianos have their own charms and special effects. I don’t by any means miss the sound of the modern piano here. 👏🏻
Im simply not educated enough to discern the differences caused by tuning. What I can hear is the contact. Beethoven played his instrument with his full ability, and at the time they were simply instruments- not collector pieces. I fully believe Beethoven wrote his music with the physical dynamics and tactile sound of the fortepiano in mind. “To play a wrong note is insignificant, to play without passion is inexcusable.” How can we ignore the fortepiano in context? The fortepiano responds to passionate and emotional playing like no other instrument. Its so sensitive and clear that every nuance is magnified. When beethoven wanted to shout, he shouted into his fortepiano and when he wanted to whisper, he no doubt whispered through his fortepiano. Music is about expression, and we cannot fully appreciate the written instructions for Beethoven’s musical expression without the proper medium. Play his music through the piano and see how it hums along. All I know is that the fortepiano actually speaks the music with control and separation of sound. The ultimate goal shouldnt be the largest resonance, dissonance is just as important to the sound.
Your observation is spot on but you don't have to be educated to discern differences caused by tuning. This recording is using an extreme tuning, the 18th century tuning, and it works, as you say, creating dissonance which is part of the music. ruclips.net/video/wjPDefnPQNU/видео.html is on an 1819 Broadwood like Beethoven's of the time, and ruclips.net/video/3xgi7U71Ehk/видео.html and ruclips.net/video/vOQ6O7PD_yc/видео.html is on instruments of 1854 and 1859 where dissonance is less apparent in less strong and modern tunings. Move to wholly modern tuning on a modern instrument and you get ruclips.net/video/RUNWy8H2EHU/видео.html
This strong mesotonic temperament will confuse ears used to the standard of equal temperament. It offers sublime sounds and shows this work in a new form.
My ears are not used to equal temperament, I hear and play a lot of music in various variants of meantone, well-temperaments and microtonal tunings. I also listen a lot to middle eastern and indian music. But ...
... the "sublime sounds" that this recording has to offer are nothing but out of tune. Whoever claims to appreciate this performance is worshipping the emperor without clothes.
Important note to anyone who is really curious to understand meantone temperament: Please do not believe that this is how meantone is supposed to sound!
@@nafets9807 The harmonic dominant seventh chords say otherwise.
@@jakegearhart This performance contains a lot of completely wrong notes because enharmonic notes are different notes in meantone temperament and therefore, it is not possible to perform this piece in meantone on a 12-note-per-octave keyboard. Doing so therefore results in a ridiculously ugly sound, as this video proves. A sonorous chord here or there doesn't change this.
@@nafets9807 Just because you replace a major third with an augmented second doesn't mean the music is unplayable. It's interpretation. Some parts sound good, some parts sound worse, it's just interpretation. I like it more than equal temperament, because I'd rather have in-tune augmented seconds than equal temperament thirds.
I like driving with the windshield painted black. It offers sublime views and shows motoring in a new form.
When this piano was made, Beethoven was 32 years old.
The sonata, or the piano itself?
@@nickroosh9407 the type of piano
Upon being asked what the sonata meant, Beethoven responded "read Shakespeare". It's in this context that the play en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest may be of interest and the use of meantone here adds to the mysterious and supernatural atmosphere at times.
How does meantone add to the mysterious atmosphere?
Incredible! I greatly appreciate the strain and tension that meantone brings to this piece. With enough time the ear can accept quite a bit of dissonance and grow to even enjoy it. What a refreshing sound to hear after so many thousands of hours of listening to equal temperament.
Thanks for this great version !
This sonata is wonderful
excellent pianist and performance.
The Most beautiful interpretation ever.
I played it for my class after playing Daniel Barenboim's version on a contemporary instrument. The musicianship of the individual is second to none, however the instrument makes me appreciate our modern instruments! Not to speak disparaging about Beethoven, but on the contrary he and is contemporaries deserve a great deal of credit for becoming accomplished on an instrument like this.
Try ruclips.net/video/wjPDefnPQNU/видео.html - a Broadwood of 1819 of the same model as was sent to Beethoven.
Best i like it sir
Thanks so much and great that what we do at Hammerwood can inspire!
To those who wonder our sanity at trying a Meantone temperament - www.peterlang.com/view/title/60733?tab=aboutauthor "Meantone is beautiful!" by Reinhart Frosch
grande el fortepiano, lesgooo
fortepiano go brrr
I don't understand how anyone can like the result of this performance with this temperament.
Aah - this is experimental and quite fun. Meantone is a shock to the ears but when one's used to it, it expresses. Try ruclips.net/video/rfqhL7UaB3Y/видео.html ruclips.net/video/p4NpeoNpDOA/видео.html and especially ruclips.net/video/rzrIWR3s84Q/видео.html . F minor was the key of the grave. Perhaps now you can hear it!
This performance is not as perfect as you would expect from a modern instrument but is much more enjoyable. Thank you for this.
14:15 best part
Yeah - Beethoven was channeling Antonio Soler.
No
1/6, or 1/4 comma...? It does not sound so awfully harsh, that is why I ask, but maybe it is just because d minor is not such a dark tonality, like c minor, f minor or e flat minor
And I would be curious to hear it on 1/3 comma, maybe on the harpsichord or clavichord
This is standard 1/4 comma.
"Many instruments of this date would have been tuned to meantone"
Not pianos or harpsichords or clavichords. CPE Bach (Beethoven's musical grandfather) already recommended a near-equal temperament usable in all 24 major and minor keys - with the warning that some *organs* would still be tuned in meantone and so not be available for free modulation.
"how far we can go chronologically with Beethoven's work before the use of Meantone becomes impossible"
Op.2/1 his first piano sonata will already be horrible due to its cantabile passages in Ab major etc.
Op.13 (Pathetique) ditto, the famous Adagio in Ab major
Op.26, a whole sonata in Ab major, ditto
Op.27/1 (Eb Fantasia) has an Adagio in Ab major
Op.27/2 (Moonlight) in C# minor and major
All before Op.31
Not to mention Beethoven's teacher Haydn's many pieces in Ab major or equally 'remote' keys.
Nothing is impossible, you can put your fingers on keys and produce sounds if you like but many things will be damned unmusical.
So are you going to play Op.2/1, the slow movement of Op.13, or the scherzo of Op.27/1 in meantone some time?
Yes if most of a piece is in D minor you will avoid *most* of the unmusicality, but most Beethoven pieces are not in D minor.
Yes - on all sorts of levels I agree. But this was an experiment. Percy Scholes asked the question "How would Bach's 48 have been able to be played on Dr Burney's keyboard". So the question of how music would have been received in England is valid. "A Treatise on teh Art of Pianoforte Construction" by Samual Wolfenden written in the 1920s recounts how tuners in his youth, so presumably 1870s/80s were then still debating where to put the "wolf". So Meantone was alive and well until quite a late period and experiments on how music was received are therefore of interest. In my opinion this experiment with The Tempest is revealing. . .
@@unequally-tempered In the Victorian Era, most temperaments that were manufactured from fractions of the comma had gone out of fashion, and the wolf interval would only be a leftover; the thirds would not represent the normal shape of meantone temperaments. This variety of meantone is not period accurate, but there were varieties of meantone that were used during the time of Beethoven's early compositions. John Preston's equal-beating well mimics the shape of meantone very closely. In it, Ab is sharp but still very usable, although the good thirds are not too obviously better than equal-temperament.
www.rollingball.com/images/PrestonEB.gif
Since Beethoven had gone deaf early in his career, he would have probably been less affected by the difficulties of well temperament.
@@mantictac Yes - very interesting thoughts. There may have been regional variations of tuning practise. The "Treatise on the Art of Pianoforte Construction" by Samuel Wolfenden is worth reading. p133: "The system of temperament, by which some of the more used keys were favoured at the expense of others, had not long given place to the present plan when the writer had his first experience as a tuner, and there were still some middle aged and elderly men, who were not able to adjust their minds and working habits to the new demands, and to whom the location of "the wolf" was a serious matter". Thanks to Ben Marks for drawing this to my attention.
Whatever might be argued one way or another, this recording puts the music under an X-Ray showing up things otherwise rather subtle and not as obviously heard ordinarily, making the link with the plot of Shakespeare it.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_tempesta incontrovertible.
Wasn't Meantone very out of date by this time even starting to become outmoded in Bach's days, replaced with well/unequal temperaments? Unequal temperaments like Werckmeister get rid of the wolf intervals, which I think you can hear in this recording.
Yes - I would agree but Percy Scholes asked the question "How would Bach's 48 have been able to be played on Dr Burney's keyboard". So the question of how music would have been received in England is valid. "A Treatise on the Art of Pianoforte Construction" by Samual Wolfenden written in the 1920s recounts how tuners in his youth, so presumably 1870s/80s were then still debating where to put the "wolf". So Meantone was alive and well until quite a late period and experiments on how music was received are therefore of interest. In my opinion this experiment with The Tempest is revealing. . . and expressive. Listening to Meantone is rather like an x-ray in bringing forward sounds that we can overlook in more civilised tunings in which they may express as nuances.
Late Renaissance and early Baroque sounds fine and authentic with 1/4 comma meantone temperament. Some JS Bach pieces do as well. Mozart, Haydn and early Beethoven sound great on well or equal tempered harpsichord and clavichord, not just piano. Of course, I'm judging by modern hearing.
Excelente
Ahhhh i Love it , thx
Who is the pianist? Very expressive - NICE!
It's Adolfo Barabino who in my opinion is one of the most musical pianists I've met
THX
GJ
What does GJ mean?
@@unequally-tempered
It means that I think you are doing a good job.Thank you.
@@nicochin3 Thanks so much for your compliment. I think it's important to do the experiments, to take the witness statements from the music, from the instruments and from examining them through the lens of the vibrations of tuning. ruclips.net/video/kh485E_NZeQ/видео.html as part of ruclips.net/video/bt-ttLY5ex8/видео.html goes to the root of our assumptions about modern equal temperament tuning. Beethoven Op 39 in all major keys is at ruclips.net/video/bt-ttLY5ex8/видео.html&t=4210s . We have to ask why he gave focus to and paused on the hideous chord of A flat near the end. Was this piece celebrating key characteristics? Exploring the different tonalities of each key . . . in meantone, or an unequal temperament in which all keys were playable . . . or in a revelation in a change to equal temperament. This piece as Opus 17 is interesting in its communication through the tuning of the 18th century, but Opus 39 apparently was composed in 1789. unheardbeethoven.org/search.php?Identifier=opus39 So much of the written documentation is in variance that we cannot start to reach any conclusions without listening to the music itself through the different lenses we have at our disposal.
14:18 3rd mvt
Perfect jazz instrument
Me: Somethings off.. *I can feel it*
What's it like playing on a piano that doesn't have double escapement also called (I think) "repetitive action" by the New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Were you able to go full tempo with it?
This is how instruments of the time were. The hammers were covered in leather with much lighter, less moving mass, so can move faster than modern hammers. The modern heavy actions are quite wrong and lead to insensitive playing.
@@unequally-tempered I dislike heavy actions for sure. But on this piano the key has to be all the way up or it wont sound which would make playing repetitive notes quite difficult. This is a pretty good recording.
I doubt the hammers move faster or it would be a difficult to compare. Cause a modern steinway puts the hammers very close to the strings.
@@MegaMech It's because of the low mass of the hammers which gives very high acceleration, and quite a shallow touch.
Werkmeister III is pretty good, but it keeps telling you it's there. Kirnberger is more transparent, and greatly superior to equal temperament for music of this period and earlier. This excellent programme rules mean tone out. Wonderful piano.
Yes - although we are under the illusion that music should always sound "nice". Being fed up of such, people like Stockhausen had to smash nice music with a sledgehammer, but perhaps meantone shows that dissonance was already built in and there, if anyone tuned it that way and opened up by choice of key. Here's Kirnberger III ruclips.net/video/wjPDefnPQNU/видео.html and here ruclips.net/video/AHAZjcPmtrs/видео.html Meantone demonstrating its value as an emotiometer.
very sad thees eexelcent very expressive pianos were outpahsed by the steinway
Yes - in part. But it's the tuning. With good tuning the Steinway can be expressive ruclips.net/video/4dCQyD57e9M/видео.html and were I to tune Kirnberger III or Meantone it would be even more-so. It's the tuning as much as the instrument. The piano in this video is, however, the very nearest instrument to the harpischord that I've experienced in the progression of the piano from its predecessor instrument.
14:16🥰
😬
Mesotonic temperament is not appropriate for Beethoven, nor is there historical evidence to suggest that he would have preferred anything other than equal temperament. Furthermore, Broadwood at that time was quite clear that the continental composers all preferred and required equal temperament - and he knew many of them personally and tuned for them. Yes, the pure thirds sound good, but the diminished fourths (G# C, for instance), sound horribly out of tune, and would have to Beethoven.
Yes this is the established opinion. But it's important to do the experiment. Here it works and it reveals something interesting. In correspondence in the "Monthly Magazine" of 1811 between James Broadwood and John Farey it becomes clear that Broadwood's method of tuning "Equal Temperament" was anything but equal. In the confusion of written records it's important to take the witness statement of the music itself as I have with ruclips.net/video/bt-ttLY5ex8/видео.html and as did Enid Katahn some 20 years ago.
Some time ago there was an article suggesting that Vallotti was much more widespread on the continent and persisted for much longer than assumed. Through CPE Bach, Haydn and the Moravian and Masonic connexions there is reason to explore the use and travel of Kirnberger temperament using 7 perfect fifths rather than 6 as with Vallotti.
Percy Scholes asked how it was possible for Bach's 48 to have been played on Dr Burney's piano which only 20 years before this was tuned to meantone. In the Mozart presentation I've demonstrated that it was possible, but it requires a delicacy and understanding. www.academia.edu/37951978/THE_COLOUR_OF_MUSIC_IN_MOZARTS_TIME_A_journey_from_Couperin_to_Chopin_Examination_of_reconstruction_of_Mozart_Fantasias_K594_and_K608_for_Mechanical_Clock Dr Burney and his contemporaries documented the need for good musicians to be able to distinguish between major and minor semitones. These are all sounds which have been obliterated by modern piano tuning which has brought mechanical uniformity that which we experience in music and has obliterated the dimensions beyond soft-loud, fast-slow and resulted in loss of communication of music. It has become a circus act, how fast, how loud, how loud how fast and is that note in the right place . . . a circus act, entertainment only, so optional. Without meaning, teaching is collapsing and music is no longer regarded as essential, a cultural necessity as valuable as Shakespeare.
In this recording of Beethoven we hear Shakespeare directly at work.
@@unequally-tempered Yes, John Farey wrote a response, from a "scientific" point of view, "proving" that the directions James Shudi Broadwood had provided were not, in fact, a recipe for precise ET. That is really not a proof that the Broadwoods were not telling the truth: that the composers and performers of their time wanted a fully circular temperament that was "reasonably equal."
What is absolutely clear is that they did not want mean tone. If you happen to find that playing Beethoven in mean tone is somehow enlightening, that is certainly your privilege, and I have nothing to say against it. However, you should not go farther and say that this somehow "proves" that this is what Beethoven was after. The historic evidence is quite clear that it was not, that in Germany in particular ET was next to universal by 1750, long before Beethoven was born, and the only other tuning that was mentioned as an alternative was Kirnberger's - not the one he wrote privately to Forkel, but the original revised Kirnberger, in which he decided that maybe he should divide his wolf fifth in the middle of the white key fifths into two.
I certainly don't expect to persuade you, but it is quite clear from all historic evidence that at the very least, mean tone is entirely inappropriate to Beethoven. I'm not a dilettante in these matters, but have thoroughly studied original sources. You may read the published results of my research here www.artoftuning.com/tuning-history/ should you care to.
Best regards
@@FredSturm1 Yes - thanks. Meantone is certainly not suitable for all Beethoven and I'm not saying so. What I'm saying here is that when we put it through the lens of meantone, rather like an IR filter in photography, the sound of this piece links us directly to the mysterious world of the Shakespeare play to which Beethoven referred. There are interesting questions and interesting assumptions which ought to be explored and Equal Temperament as we tune it today was certainly not in universal use. In the organ world many people stuck to meantone right through to the Victorian period. For less extreme effects temperaments with perfect fifths had the advantage of being easy to tune and provide circulating facilities through all keys. They are not all the same but many give similar effects.
I've demonstrated in the case of Mozart that his works for mechanical clock exploited the tuning to achieve an intended effect, and that the piano sonatas come alive when in Meantone and convey Masonic philosophy. We miss all of that with modern ET performance. Kirnberger III hints towards meantone and is useful for a more universal temperament still producing chromaticism, colour. ET has killed colour.
Most certainly Haydn's variations in F minor and Mozart's Ah! vous dirai je maman lose their soul in Equal Temperament and for this reason it's important to take the witness statements of the music into account in assessment of the written record.
Even coming through to Brahms listening through the lens of an unequal temperament ruclips.net/video/p7AoF3zvcaI/видео.html has a profound and important effect. What people wrote, did, and heard may not have been entirely the same.
With declining perception of relevance of music to ordinary people it's really necessary to do the experiments to see and hear exactly where assumptions have been, and possibly to steer a different path in order to bring the emotional content of the music back into the consciousness.
Without it we have merely Japanese and Chinese mechanical repetition because the feeling inherent in the sound, the vibrations, the tuning, has been obliterated.
Four other factors are relevant - (1) modern man-in-the-street audiences don't have the refinement of listening and perception that perhaps a more widely musically educated audience might have had in the previous centuries. If there were musical subtleties written into the music by means of chromatic interaction with the tuning, we have to use a stronger flavour of temperament for people now to be able to hear it. That's demonstrated well by this Beethoven performance in Meantone. (2) Pianos after the 1870s developed a much more prominent 5th harmonic and there was a commercial advantage to be had in tuning such instruments to a pure Equal Temperament. The glistening effect sold pianos and created worship of the brand rather than how the brand interpreted the music. Pianos before this date had a more prominent 3rd harmonic, the 5th often being absent, and so a less fixed vision of temperament is indicated. (3) When many notes of the scale are tuned to the 3rd harmonic of lower notes resonance of the instrument is enhanced and this may have been relevant in the development of acoustic power. (4) In the Mozart paper www.academia.edu/37951978/THE_COLOUR_OF_MUSIC_IN_MOZARTS_TIME_A_journey_from_Couperin_to_Chopin_Examination_of_reconstruction_of_Mozart_Fantasias_K594_and_K608_for_Mechanical_Clock I recorded the comment by Orde-Hume that barrel organs which had not been altered from the 18th century were tuned to a scale "which made one wince" and that "it was intended to". This is reason enough to examine music composed from that period in such a scale tuned so as to be intended to make one wince.
@@unequally-tempered I have nothing against experimenting with unequal tunings, but my impression you are simply an adherent of what is essentially a religion of "anything but ET," and that you lack respect for and understanding of history. Why did ET end up being essentially universal in the west (at least until the fad of UET in the second half of the 20th century)? Because composers wanted to write in such a way that they explored keys in a completely free manner, not needing to worry about avoiding particular intervals and keys. ET is simply a compromise that works quite well - and it works well whether it is executed very precisely or relatively sloppily.
I have done my own experimentation. As a piano technician at a university, one year I changed my tunings from ET to various UETs, without announcing it, to see what feedback I would get. I did get a small number of complaints from the more extreme tunings I had tried, and pulled back to milder forms. I had no other comments, either during that experimental year or the following year when I reverted to ET without notice.
I did tell three or four faculty what I was doing, and they simply couldn't hear it, couldn't tell what the differences were even when I pointed them out.
My conclusion from that, and from many, many other experiences over the course of 40 years has convinced me that the precise shape of temperament has a very low level of importance in the larger scheme of music. Musicians playing instruments that aren't fixed pitch produce approximate pitches, and they have to be quite far off (from the point of view of a piano tuner) before anyone notices and complains.
Be that as it may, I have no problem with people finding something new about a piece by listening to it in a different context, though I think that for piano, the difference between 20th, mid 19th, early 19th, late 18th century instruments is FAR more revealing than tuning.
As to my original comment, it is clear that Beethoven would not accept a mean tone tuning for the simple reason that he wanted the black keys to be usable enharmonically. When he wrote A flat, he wanted it to sound "in tune." He did not write so that D flat, A flat, and G flat, D#, and A#, and the various double sharps and flats were intended to sound raucous in context with the other notes. That's the bottom line. Circularity is an absolute must for Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Brahms, essentially all major composers after Baroque and many of them during parts of the Baroque - especially in Germany.
I'm afraid that your "Proof by what sounds right to me" approach doesn't convince me in the least, especially when it ignores a plethora of documentary evidence to the contrary. But to each his own.
@@FredSturm1 My work is far from a lack of respect for history. Circularity was not an absolute must for Mozart for a start - he worked in specific and limited keys and at the other end of the period I've demonstrated Brahm's Violin sonatas to exhibit the calm of the mirror smooth lake at Tun which inspired it when it's tuned to a circular unequal temperament. The evidence for pure equal temperament, often pushed by the piano manufacturers who had a vested interest, goes against the grain of an increasing corpus of scholarship such as zapdoc.tips/the-influence-of-unequal-temperament-on-chopin-s-piano-works.html together with the chronology of scholarship to which I've referred in my Mozart paper.
The experience of tuning for musicians is interesting. Bad musicians who play mechanically and often hitting the keys and not listening to the sound don't notice the difference but good musicians can revel in the soundscape. It's this indifference to the sound, to the vibrations, the emotion, that has led to purely mechanical playing and music being reduced to the circus act, entertainment, rather than the literature of the status of Shakespeare. It's this that has reduced music to being very optional and marginal and budgets in education being cut very drastically with music as a luxury being one of the first subjects to disappear.
The true meaning of the Chromatic Scale is now so removed from music that the Wikipedia article fails even to give a nod to it other than the mechanical movement through semitones.
ruclips.net/video/qdsFLIo9l88/видео.html ruclips.net/video/A34K-fj5nHs/видео.html ruclips.net/video/XpqrynlohR4/видео.html
being the Chopin preludes in all 24 keys demonstrate the effect of a good circulating temperament and that the audiences do really hear a difference. Likewise ruclips.net/video/hgA1-I5MfNY/видео.html demonstrated by the comment from A Yuu.
It's been a privilege to have been able to work with musicians willing to experiment and who are virtuosic and expert enough both to hear and to exploit the difference.
It's also of relevance that pianos such as this 1802 instrument rely on resonance to increase their power and this is enhanced when notes of the scale are tuned as many as possible to harmonics of the strings. This has an effect upon available pedalling techniques noted in early scores both of Beethoven and of Chopin.
1. mvt 3 should've been the Westworld soundtrack. 2. 5:30 is like... a total rip off of Benny and the Jets... Elton would turn in his grave. 3. You'd think this guy had to be deaf to tolerate this intonation. 4. JK this performance is truly incredible- it completely turns my ears upside down in the best possible way. Beautiful.
Haha! Yes! And if it's right that Beethoven told his publisher to read Shakespeare simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest it.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_tempesta then perhaps Beethoven might have liked it this way too!
Wonderful playing; but the tuning is hideous.
It's meant to be - and it suggests Beethoven really did intend his comment "Read Shakespeare". Try ruclips.net/video/wjPDefnPQNU/видео.html for an alternative.
Upon being asked what the sonata meant, Beethoven responded "read Shakespeare". It's in this context that the play en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest may be of interest and the use of meantone here adds to the mysterious and supernatural atmosphere at times.
@@unequally-tempered Well, castor oil may be good for you; but I just can’t stand the taste.
Out of tune?
Absolutely in tune with Meantone tuning
Hahaha