Superb! The nuances of UET may be subtle but they are there, nonetheless. As the overtones (or resultant, if you prefer) resonate one becomes aware of details that, imho, are simply lost in ET. But you must listen for it and know what you're listening for. Also, they''re beautifully played with an understanding of how to reveal the lost beauty of UET. Thank you!!!
@tomalesbay Hi! It's not a just tuning but one which has lots of just fifths and some sweet thirds. The idea is that the white keys are generally nice and pure and the less used more exotic more "remote" keys are more spicey and available for special effects . . . and this is what composers intended. This is a temperament on the spectrum of "good temperaments" as for which Bach was writing his 48 preludes for the well temperered Klavier
My goodness - the effect of those chords at the end of #2 is amazing in your Kellner temperament! Purely tuned, restful chords (no annoying out of tune thirds that produce a horrible trembling). This restful effect is totally lost in Equal T, because the final chords don’t settle.
@jpstenino Hi! Michele is brilliant and very modest and will be so delighted to know that you have enjoyed his performance. It would be great to get more people to live performances - he deserved more than the 20 who came to his summer UK recital . . . Ross Duffin - yes - a seminal book. Brilliant. Equal Temperament is so pervasive and "stuck"in the psyche and the ears that a local equal tempered singing teacher won't come to our Hammerwood concerts as she says our piano is out of tune!
@@unequally-tempered No problem! I’ve finished the timestamps for this video, if you want to love my comment again. Alternatively, if you copy and paste my comment into the description of your video, RUclips will make timestamps automatically for you :) I was recently recommended your “Bach played in Unequal Temperament” video; it was my first instance where I really learned that keyboardists care about temperaments besides 12 TET - and that there’s history behind this! So I’ve been wanting to train my ears for other temperaments ever since. Also, I’m working on arranging Chopin’s Preludes for left hand alone and have been listening to different performances to see a range of interpretations. Naturally, once I learned this video existed, I had to check it out :) Thank you for uploading these great performances! I’ve never been more grateful for the RUclips algorithm.
@@Varooooooom Hi! Thanks so much. Possibly the other two videos would benefit too if you might feel inclined. I have a problem - this tuning is normal for me. Can you hear the difference? How fascinating that you're preparing these for left hand alone. I'd like to tune for you . . .
@@unequally-tempered I will definitely make timestamps for those videos as well, whenever I get the chance to! And honestly, I’ve been watching videos here and there comparing different temperaments, and unfortunately I can’t hear much of a substantial difference :( Maybe it is that the differences are supposed to be small/subtle? I’m not quite sure how to describe it.
@@Varooooooom Yes - I agree with you - I can't hear much difference either. But my tuning has improved since these recordings and sometimes effects are subtle. ruclips.net/video/QnYITP11UgQ/видео.html might bring the subtlety of temperament into light and on ruclips.net/video/hgA1-I5MfNY/видео.html a direct comparison. ruclips.net/video/p7AoF3zvcaI/видео.html might bring a subtle realisation also.
This is a Kellner tuning with 7 perfect fifths and 5 tempered fifths. I'd like to redo these recordings with a sensitive pianist in stronger more flavoured tunings. Perhaps I am used to the sound but here I cannot hear the effects in each key. Can you?
@acortot It's a temperament using lots of perfect fifths. I don't want to be specific until Adolfo Barabino has done a CD as he has the right to being the first . . . !
@@martinfido2161 It's Kellner. This was stated in the reply to romophonic82 2 years ago. It's in the well-tempered family, and similar to what would have been used in Chopin's lifetime.
Actually, Chopin was said to be unable to compose effectively without a proper piano in front of him. Supposedly, he was stuck with a poor rental at the time he composed the 24 preludes, and struggled to finish them.
He finished the cycle despite being so ill for weeks that everyone including himself thought he'd die any day. Although he certainly didn't compose all of the op. 28 on Mallorca, it is astonishing what the man could come up with, regardless of extreme physical - and mental - agony.
This is a nice demonstration of how much better early romantic music can sound in non-ET, but the other characteristics of the modern piano do bother me somewhat. Aggressive hammers, cast-iron frame, cross-stringing.
The Oxford Dictionary delivers! Better (adj.) - 1. More desirable, satisfactory, or effective. Honestly, though, we can guess it is about "more pleasing to the ear", which everyone will measure according to his or her tastes.
I wonder how Chopin managed about keeping his pianos in tune. Did he have a dabble with his own tuning hammer? Maybe a keen volunteer followed him around. That would be an interesting project.
It is wonderful to listen and watch you play. Bravo to the lighting design and camera angle. The recording is very,very fine. What is your opinion of the book "How equal temperament ruined harmony" by Ross W Duffin? I am most fortunate to have subscribed. your work is grand!
It appears the piano has been tuned only once for all of the preludes (well, I've only watched/listened to a few, so far). Is that correct, though? It seems the tuning would prioritize some keys over others, C-Major, for example, but not F#-Major, etc. So I would be curious which preludes fit best (attentive listening could also be the guide, I suppose). Regardless, it's a real treat to be able to hear these beautiful pieces played in just intonation. Thank you so much for posting.
This isn't a Just Intonation. This is a tuning of the sort of "Well Temperament" that Bach might have intended to be used for his 48 preludes and fugues for "Well Tempered Clavier" in which all keys could be played with equal facility
This is A=440 using Kellner temperament. It doesn't matter whether 440 or 432 - it's the intervals between notes that matter and that's the temperament.
@Egg MCMUFFIN - A=440 was adopted so various musicians could comfortably play together. Using an alternate A will render one to mostly playing with oneself (unless a very old wind instrument with low pitch is used, which is unlikely because they're rarely maintained as they became obsolete by the 1950s). My oboe, clarinet and saxophones are designed to play at A=440, my flute at A=442; European players tune even higher. String instruments require weeks to become stable to a change of pitch. Singers rely on muscle memory to sing in tune. The early music movement has adopted A=415 as a standard pitch for the same reason, even though most surviving instruments aren't A=415. Some organs of the time are below A=400. The 2007 Taylor & Boody organ in Yale's Marquand Chapel is an EXACT copy of a north German baroque instrument, thus it is tuned nearly a half-step ABOVE A=440. Peterborough Cathedral lowered the pitch of their 1894 Wm. Hill organ from A=453 to A=440 in a restoration completed in 2017 in order to make it much more versatile.
it sound nice as long as the pianist uses the right pedal. unisons are tuned too straight and closed , then the notes are not linked together enough, not enough natural resonance. hopefully those pianos have ye avery impure tone naturally (string lenght differs alot in one unison) so it open the tone yet a little. You may learn to deal with the energy of the tone while tuning, that would sound so much better.(then on any piano) thanks for the experience.
It is what it is - you can't do the mathematically impossible and put just intervals and play in all keys in just 12-notes (maybe 19, 31, 53 etc ET). When I hear these unequal temperament recordings, they sound rough as old boots for several reasons 1) They sound like old pianos you might find in the attic/loft that haven't been played for 100 years, 2) The current crop of players trying to do these historically correct performances are not the pick of the best, 3) Not the best sound engineers or piano technicians are setting things up, 4) Related - the room acoustics, position and qualities of the microphones are not the best. Apart from our ears acquiescing and becoming used to ET, what you hear on CD and in concerts are the best of the best performers (stellar technique especially regarding CHORD VOICINGS and agogics), the best piano technicians, equipment, acoustics and sound engineers. I think Lady Halle said of the early authentic performance musicians (I don't mean for this particular video but others), "they couldn't get employment anywhere else". Well over the decades the art has improved incredibly, so these historic UET piano recordings might sound good one day too, as they recreate the lost art. To me, the youtube videos of Chopin's 24 and Ballades in UET (you might see them listed to the right) sound rubbish and unmusical for all the afore said reasons. (Just one after-though, has a non-digital piano ever been set-up as ET anyway? What with stretch tuning and wot-not (especially cheap uprights), it simply isn't true that pianos are in ET. Technicians have their quirks too and variations in counting the beats when tuning. The skill, musicality and expression of a performer is what counts - ever heard a mediocre piano sound good with a pro?)
Much of what you say is opinion and people are entitled to their opinions. But the facts upon which you base your opinions are less than complete. Many digital pianos have unequal temperaments built in, but few bother to explore them. Try ruclips.net/video/mnTDkj5dYYc/видео.html with a top Fazioli piano perfectly tuned, recorded with the best of equipment just to complete your painful experience.
You’re so full of it. This is a well maintained piano that has been mic’d well. You claim to have heard other piano videos, but you don’t actually have the ability to perceive what a good recording this is. Tuning is an incredibly nuanced and complex topic, and nothing in your comment here demonstrates that you actually know the first thing about it. You’re not fooling anybody except yourself.
Superb!
The nuances of UET may be subtle but they are there, nonetheless. As the overtones (or resultant, if you prefer) resonate one becomes aware of details that, imho, are simply lost in ET. But you must listen for it and know what you're listening for.
Also, they''re beautifully played with an understanding of how to reveal the lost beauty of UET. Thank you!!!
No. 7 sounds incredible! So affecting!
@tomalesbay Hi! It's not a just tuning but one which has lots of just fifths and some sweet thirds. The idea is that the white keys are generally nice and pure and the less used more exotic more "remote" keys are more spicey and available for special effects . . . and this is what composers intended. This is a temperament on the spectrum of "good temperaments" as for which Bach was writing his 48 preludes for the well temperered Klavier
And we hear that already in no.2!
My goodness - the effect of those chords at the end of #2 is amazing in your Kellner temperament! Purely tuned, restful chords (no annoying out of tune thirds that produce a horrible trembling). This restful effect is totally lost in Equal T, because the final chords don’t settle.
💝💝💝 Thank you very much, indeed ...
Beautiful playing - and sound!
@jpstenino Hi! Michele is brilliant and very modest and will be so delighted to know that you have enjoyed his performance. It would be great to get more people to live performances - he deserved more than the 20 who came to his summer UK recital . . .
Ross Duffin - yes - a seminal book. Brilliant. Equal Temperament is so pervasive and "stuck"in the psyche and the ears that a local equal tempered singing teacher won't come to our Hammerwood concerts as she says our piano is out of tune!
0:00 - No.1
0:52 - No.2
3:17 - No.3
4:26 - No.4
7:05 - No.5
7:48 - No.6
10:07 - No.7
10:58 - No.8
13:11 - No.9
Really helpful - thank you so much
@@unequally-tempered No problem! I’ve finished the timestamps for this video, if you want to love my comment again. Alternatively, if you copy and paste my comment into the description of your video, RUclips will make timestamps automatically for you :)
I was recently recommended your “Bach played in Unequal Temperament” video; it was my first instance where I really learned that keyboardists care about temperaments besides 12 TET - and that there’s history behind this! So I’ve been wanting to train my ears for other temperaments ever since.
Also, I’m working on arranging Chopin’s Preludes for left hand alone and have been listening to different performances to see a range of interpretations. Naturally, once I learned this video existed, I had to check it out :) Thank you for uploading these great performances! I’ve never been more grateful for the RUclips algorithm.
@@Varooooooom Hi! Thanks so much. Possibly the other two videos would benefit too if you might feel inclined. I have a problem - this tuning is normal for me. Can you hear the difference? How fascinating that you're preparing these for left hand alone. I'd like to tune for you . . .
@@unequally-tempered I will definitely make timestamps for those videos as well, whenever I get the chance to! And honestly, I’ve been watching videos here and there comparing different temperaments, and unfortunately I can’t hear much of a substantial difference :( Maybe it is that the differences are supposed to be small/subtle? I’m not quite sure how to describe it.
@@Varooooooom Yes - I agree with you - I can't hear much difference either. But my tuning has improved since these recordings and sometimes effects are subtle. ruclips.net/video/QnYITP11UgQ/видео.html might bring the subtlety of temperament into light and on ruclips.net/video/hgA1-I5MfNY/видео.html a direct comparison. ruclips.net/video/p7AoF3zvcaI/видео.html might bring a subtle realisation also.
Amazing sound!
ruclips.net/video/A34K-fj5nHs/видео.html and ruclips.net/video/XpqrynlohR4/видео.html are the further of the preludes.
You know, 'unequal temperament' doesn't say a whole lot on it's own.
Yup. "Non-logarithmic" might be better..
@romophonic82 It's an 1895 Bechstein at Emerson College in Forest Row.
@latribe Thanks! It's a lovely sounding little thing!
May I ask which tuning you went for? How are the intervals defined?
This is a Kellner tuning with 7 perfect fifths and 5 tempered fifths. I'd like to redo these recordings with a sensitive pianist in stronger more flavoured tunings. Perhaps I am used to the sound but here I cannot hear the effects in each key. Can you?
@acortot It's a temperament using lots of perfect fifths. I don't want to be specific until Adolfo Barabino has done a CD as he has the right to being the first . . . !
Can you tell us what it is now? :-)
@@martinfido2161 It's Kellner. This was stated in the reply to romophonic82 2 years ago. It's in the well-tempered family, and similar to what would have been used in Chopin's lifetime.
4:25 Prelude in E minor - Op. 28 No. 4
il migliore!!!! *-*
Actually, Chopin was said to be unable to compose effectively without a proper piano in front of him. Supposedly, he was stuck with a poor rental at the time he composed the 24 preludes, and struggled to finish them.
Well, he succeeded absolutely admirably. What a hero.
He finished the cycle despite being so ill for weeks that everyone including himself thought he'd die any day. Although he certainly didn't compose all of the op. 28 on Mallorca, it is astonishing what the man could come up with, regardless of extreme physical - and mental - agony.
This is a nice demonstration of how much better early romantic music can sound in non-ET, but the other characteristics of the modern piano do bother me somewhat. Aggressive hammers, cast-iron frame, cross-stringing.
The Oxford Dictionary delivers!
Better (adj.) - 1. More desirable, satisfactory, or effective.
Honestly, though, we can guess it is about "more pleasing to the ear", which everyone will measure according to his or her tastes.
Silly smartass. Better, as in enabling the performer to express the composer's original intentions. You really think you're clever?
I wonder how Chopin managed about keeping his pianos in tune. Did he have a dabble with his own tuning hammer? Maybe a keen volunteer followed him around. That would be an interesting project.
there's a little section about that in “Chopin's piano" by Paul Kildea
It is wonderful to listen and watch you play. Bravo to the lighting design and camera angle. The recording is very,very fine.
What is your opinion of the book "How equal temperament ruined harmony" by Ross W Duffin?
I am most fortunate to have subscribed. your work is grand!
I do have a V in rosewood, 1885...
It appears the piano has been tuned only once for all of the preludes (well, I've only watched/listened to a few, so far). Is that correct, though? It seems the tuning would prioritize some keys over others, C-Major, for example, but not F#-Major, etc. So I would be curious which preludes fit best (attentive listening could also be the guide, I suppose).
Regardless, it's a real treat to be able to hear these beautiful pieces played in just intonation. Thank you so much for posting.
This isn't a Just Intonation. This is a tuning of the sort of "Well Temperament" that Bach might have intended to be used for his 48 preludes and fugues for "Well Tempered Clavier" in which all keys could be played with equal facility
:49 is really interesting.
is this available yet as a CD? or as a download? with liner notes, i hope!
Hello, is it a Bechstein V?
Or a longer one?
Hi! From memory it was around 1895-1905 vintage and a medium size, not with pretensions of length.
latribe perhaps about two meters?
latribe thank you very much!
@@garix51 Probably around that - between 190 and 210
Hey. I was wondering what the value of the A note equals on this bechstein. Ive been in a stromg debate about what to tune to.
This is A=440 using Kellner temperament. It doesn't matter whether 440 or 432 - it's the intervals between notes that matter and that's the temperament.
@@unequally-tempered thank you for the fast reply! Im an amateur studying tunings and tempermanents' so to have such quick help helps me alot
@@unequally-tempered ive also wondered, why should A=440hz? Ive had my pianos A tuned to 435hz.
@Egg MCMUFFIN No damage at all.
@Egg MCMUFFIN - A=440 was adopted so various musicians could comfortably play together. Using an alternate A will render one to mostly playing with oneself (unless a very old wind instrument with low pitch is used, which is unlikely because they're rarely maintained as they became obsolete by the 1950s).
My oboe, clarinet and saxophones are designed to play at A=440, my flute at A=442; European players tune even higher. String instruments require weeks to become stable to a change of pitch. Singers rely on muscle memory to sing in tune.
The early music movement has adopted A=415 as a standard pitch for the same reason, even though most surviving instruments aren't A=415. Some organs of the time are below A=400. The 2007 Taylor & Boody organ in Yale's Marquand Chapel is an EXACT copy of a north German baroque instrument, thus it is tuned nearly a half-step ABOVE A=440.
Peterborough Cathedral lowered the pitch of their 1894 Wm. Hill organ from A=453 to A=440 in a restoration completed in 2017 in order to make it much more versatile.
the 2nd prelude still sounds like a czerny etude
Which piano is being used?
It's an 1895 Bechstein tuned to Kellner temperament
what piano is it ?
It's an 1895 Bechstein tuned to Kellner temperament
Prefer to hear it played with ET tuning, but don't ask me why.
Because that's what your ear is accustomed to hearing. Different is uncomfortable for most until it becomes familiar.
it sound nice as long as the pianist uses the right pedal. unisons are tuned too straight and closed , then the notes are not linked together enough, not enough natural resonance. hopefully those pianos have ye avery impure tone naturally (string lenght differs alot in one unison) so it open the tone yet a little. You may learn to deal with the energy of the tone while tuning, that would sound so much better.(then on any piano) thanks for the experience.
It is what it is - you can't do the mathematically impossible and put just intervals and play in all keys in just 12-notes (maybe 19, 31, 53 etc ET). When I hear these unequal temperament recordings, they sound rough as old boots for several reasons 1) They sound like old pianos you might find in the attic/loft that haven't been played for 100 years, 2) The current crop of players trying to do these historically correct performances are not the pick of the best, 3) Not the best sound engineers or piano technicians are setting things up, 4) Related - the room acoustics, position and qualities of the microphones are not the best.
Apart from our ears acquiescing and becoming used to ET, what you hear on CD and in concerts are the best of the best performers (stellar technique especially regarding CHORD VOICINGS and agogics), the best piano technicians, equipment, acoustics and sound engineers.
I think Lady Halle said of the early authentic performance musicians (I don't mean for this particular video but others), "they couldn't get employment anywhere else". Well over the decades the art has improved incredibly, so these historic UET piano recordings might sound good one day too, as they recreate the lost art. To me, the youtube videos of Chopin's 24 and Ballades in UET (you might see them listed to the right) sound rubbish and unmusical for all the afore said reasons.
(Just one after-though, has a non-digital piano ever been set-up as ET anyway? What with stretch tuning and wot-not (especially cheap uprights), it simply isn't true that pianos are in ET. Technicians have their quirks too and variations in counting the beats when tuning. The skill, musicality and expression of a performer is what counts - ever heard a mediocre piano sound good with a pro?)
Much of what you say is opinion and people are entitled to their opinions. But the facts upon which you base your opinions are less than complete. Many digital pianos have unequal temperaments built in, but few bother to explore them. Try ruclips.net/video/mnTDkj5dYYc/видео.html with a top Fazioli piano perfectly tuned, recorded with the best of equipment just to complete your painful experience.
You’re so full of it. This is a well maintained piano that has been mic’d well. You claim to have heard other piano videos, but you don’t actually have the ability to perceive what a good recording this is. Tuning is an incredibly nuanced and complex topic, and nothing in your comment here demonstrates that you actually know the first thing about it. You’re not fooling anybody except yourself.