Thank you, Dana and David. I figured your experiences would be all over
the map and dictated by the conductors' whims but was also interested
in the politics of the decision. Interesting also to see that a 1/4
meantone is ocassionally used. I would hope so whenever natural horns
have a large presence, btw. ...fwiw.
Dana, I had wondered about drift especially when some of the choristers
are more aware of the meantone workings than others. As a piece
modulates to, say, the II or iii, it is probably very difficult to keep
the original scale intact.
Sean
On Feb 15, 2009, at 2:18 PM, David van Ooijen wrote:
On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 10:09 PM, Sean Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
From your professional experiences, do choral directers ever
explicitly
choose a specific meantone scale? Do you ever get instructions to
(not)
temper your frets?
I'm a pro and get hired as such: gun for hire. Sometimes that means I
have to shut up and do as I'm told. Sometimes that means I am aksed to
be involved, advise, give feed back. On some of my contracts it says
Sorge, 1/4 comma mean tone, 1/6 comma mean tone, Valotti, Werckmeister
III, Jägermeister IV or equal temperament (if it's ET, they usually
don't specify as apparently they're not quite HIP-minded or plain
ignorant). Sometimes the conductor calls me beforehand to ask what
might be a good idea for the music or what is possible for me. (I even
get called by conductors that ask me why their lute player - not me -
is refusing to set his frets in MT, it _is_ possible after all, isn't
it?) Sometimes the organ/cembalo player and I call each other before
hand to decide what to propose to the conductor in case we are fearing
to be stuck in ET or somthing Equally Impossible. With some orchestras
some temperaments are more or less standard (Florilegium (if their
usual organ player plays) = Sorge, Swaen = 1/6 comma mean tone), with
some organ/cembalo player I know what to expect (Pieter is
Werckmeister-Pieter, blast!, Vincent =
close-to-Sorge-but-tuned-by-ear-so-don't-set-your-tuner-on-it, Siebe
= 'Bach' temperament), with some music some temperaments are more or
less expected (Monteverdi = 1/4 comma mean tone).That's just my
experience, FWIW or whatever abbreviating is called for to make this a
non-absolute truth.
David - happily played ET in many transposed (Dowland and other) songs
today
--
*******************************
David van Ooijen
[email protected]
www.davidvanooijen.nl
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