On 3 Sep 2005 at 22:43, John Howell wrote: > At 5:30 PM -0400 9/3/05, David W. Fenton wrote: > >So, there are two choices: > > > >1. everyone plays in Temperament ordinaire (not necessarily > >appropriate for the repertory of the other group, though probably > >better than modern ET), OR > > > >2. we play in Temperament ordinaire and our harpsichord tuner is very > >busy. > > But no busier than if one group plays at 440 and the other at 415! > Only in ET can the keyboard shift be seamless.
Well, 415 is a hoax, so we don't use it at NYU. If we needed to (e.g., for recorders), we have one harpsichord built for 415 (a Dowd French double that is not too great) that we would use. Indeed, when I first arrived at NYU that's exactly what we did, with me playing harpsichord for a group of 3 recorder players (one of whom was also a very fine professional Baroque oboist). Our gamba player played at 415 then, too, but there was no one else in the whole department playing gamba at that point, so she easily could have used one of the other instruments if she needed 440. After a new gamba teacher arrived (the incomparable Margaret Panofsky), since we were specializing in English music, we settled on the standard English pitch of 440 after a couple of years of struggling at 415. Our instruments played *much* better at 440 than at 415, where they were always flabby and unstable. When I ordered my own gamba I insisted that it be built for 440 rather than 415, since I'm convinced that 415 is not really historically justified. It's just as much of a pragmatic compromise as equal temperament, and problematic for as many repertories as it is close to historically appropriate. So, at NYU, we have no issues with 415 vs. 440 because we don't subscribe to the 415 hoax in the first place. I still think that for string players, gut strings are much more important than whether they play at 415 or 440, and the relaxed sound you speak of has more to do with that and the use of Baroque bows than it does with the lower pitch. When the choice is between gut strings and Baroque bows at 415 and gut strings and Baroque bows at 440, the difference is greatly minimized. It's only when the instruments built to work at 415 are involved, like winds and some keyboard instruments, that one gets stuck with 415. But I'm sure different people playing different repertories on different instruments will reach different conclusions about this. All I know is that I started out playing the gamba at 415 and when we switched to 440, it became a much more pleasurable activity (and it wasn't because I'd progressed so much -- it was directly related to the fact that the instruments simply were more responsive at that pitch). -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
