Kirnberger's keyboard temperament, 1771, playing Bach

[mtv565]

What temperament? Don't be a joke! Re-tune this out-of-tune keyboard!

[thebpl]

@mtv565 This is what Kirnberger II sounds like, tuned accurately. Tune it yourself on another harpsichord to hear its handful of rough intervals even more directly. Part of the point of this video is: this temperament has these serious problems in it.

[susumu07]

Just curious, what sort of temperament did Rameau use? 

[fasteddie5439]

I always thought keyboard instruments were easy until I started reading about all these tunings. I'm glad I only have four strings to tune on my cello.

[cber2360]

nothing wrong with this temperament. Though I play professionally, I've not used the Kirnberger temperaments, but I may use start using this for late 18th century German themed concerts/recitals.

I'm intrigued though by the pure third C-E, is that definitely correct? I know sometimes it's possible to make mistakes tuning unfamiliar temperaments.

[thebpl]

@cber2360 The pure major 3rd C-E is definitely correct: it was one of Kirnberger's main points to use as many non-beating intervals as possible. Personally, I think this temperament sounds awful, with the rough D-A-E 5ths and the Pythagorean major 3rds at so many places. Have you tried the Bach temperament that I have in most of my other videos, and at larips com ?

[cber2360]

@thebpl oh are you Bradley Lehman? I LOVE your bach temperament! I think you're right on with it, and I've used it many times for J.S and C.P.E. Bach. I've used it in C.P.E. Bach concerti where temperament becomes very noticeable and it was just right. It had all the different colours you might associate with different keys while keeping them all playable.

[thebpl]

@cber2360 This temperament irks me even more melodically than it does harmonically. The C major fugue here is full of scale passages whose intonation sounds lumpy, when pressed through this temperament.

[cber2360]

@thebpl I'm interested at the moment in the difference there might have been between 'amateur' and 'profi' temeperaments. There possibility that people such as Sebastian B and Telemann - as specialists - might have had temperaments that worked for them, but popular publications such as Werkmeister's treatise, or Kirnberger's (don't know yet if it was popular) had workable temperaments that good amateurs and middle class musicians might have used. Don't know if I can explain well in youtube

[atemperman]

@thebpl, I agree with you on its faults being more melodic than harmonic, at least for music that stays close to the home key of C major. Pythagorean thirds will be rare in a piece like WTC 846 (off the top of my head, I'd guess that there'd be A-C# and E-G# pythag. thirds in this piece, but I can't remember exactly. To be fair, the Lehman/Bach temperament has a nearly-pythag E-G# and a "worse"-than-usual (for informed early-mid 18th cen. chromatic keyboard music) A-C# third.

[atemperman]

@thebpl, My assessment comes from being an amateur oboist and singer, so perhaps my melodic sense is finer than a harmonic sense that tolerates a 406 E-G# but dislikes 408 Pythag M3s. Is there any historical record of folks like Kirnberger actually tuning real harpsichords (or clavichords or pianos), or were their domains exclusively composing, teaching, and theorizing? Incid'ly, I'd like to discuss with you the idea that leading #'s (ti-do) should be less stable than leading flats (mi-fa).

[oktav1970]

I love pure C major * .-)

[RoboticusMusic]

it does sound out of tune and plain annoying in places. this temperament sounds unstable. is this a popular temperament?

[latribe]

@RoboticusMusic On the piano it's a very good and "well behaved" unequal temperament that gives good colour to the keys

[ToccataInF]

I agree with you that in singing without a prejudiced ear the closest to a "natural" interval is more pleasing. Many of the * you mention are in 16th note passages and pass the ear quickly. The others occur in chromatic passages, (quip) could this be an accident? All in all I rather like it. I once heard the Fantasia (Fant & Fugue in g) for organ in a "well tempered" tuning and the cycle of 5th and the major minor chords were delightfully impressive.

[ccdrz]

But when I finished auditioning them. I found that the equal temperament setting sounded painfully out of tune!  After only 15 minutes or so of hearing pure intervals, my ear was already confused.

[ccdrz]

The pure c -e third is interesting ... when in passing it sounds comically flat ... but when imbedded in the triad at the end, it's lovely. I have equal temperament soaked ears (I'm a piano tech), of course. Recently I had an interesting experience. I play a Rogers electronic organ which has various temperament settings. I found most of them WAY too crazy for the congregation.

[gothips]

what is the relation between the clavier temperament and its tuning. im really got in but i have difficulties to understand most of you tell. could someone pls tell it in an easier way?

[SingHouse]

Ok. Temperament means an instrument's capacity to play in all keys but still sound like it's in tune. Why is this so wonderful? well, take an intrument like the guitar for example. If you tune it to sound perfectly in tune in C major, it will sound out of tune in other keys like E major. This is because the human ear doesn't hear harmonies mathematically, yet mathematic ratios and values are how we describe musical scales and chords.

[SingHouse]

If you tuned an instrument according to the mathematical ratios we use to describe sound frequencies, it would sound horribly out of tune to the human error, despite being perfect on paper. And, if, as in the guitar example I used earlier, you tune the instrument to sound perfectly in tune in a given, it will sound horribly out of tune in other keys. The solution? COMPROMISE. You tune the instrument so that it's not quite tuned according to the human ear, not quite consistent with maths.

[SingHouse]

Final part of the answer :) so now I hope you see why temperament is so important for an instrument like the harpsichord which is expected to be able to play in all keys. This is why I love listening to early music with lutes and other strings - they know how to tune their instrument to fit the key they play in. So they're not tempered, but as long as they stick to a given key you hear what to be really in tune means. There's no such thing as a tuned piano - it can only be tempered.

[wcbroccoli]

"Temperament" does not refer to an instrument's capacity to play in all keys but still sound in tune.

A "temperament" is simply one of many TUNING SYSTEMS which compromise the pure intervals of just intonation to satisfy certain aesthetic requirements.

ALL temperaments are compromises.

For example, you can tune a piano, organ or harpsichord to have pure 5ths or just major 3rds or be able play in all keys. But you can't have it all !

[wcbroccoli]

Harpsichords and organs were not always expected to be able to play in all keys. Mean tone tuning persisted past 1700.

New temperaments arose to meet the needs of changing harmonic aesthetics.

E.g, before the Renaissance, they like pure 5ths and 4ths.

Later, they wanted pure triads.

Later, they wanted to be able to modulate to more remote keys.

[wcbroccoli]

Pianos, organs and harpsichords all have the same problem: Once you tune the instrument, you can't adjust the intonation on the fly like you can with the human voice or a violin.

Lutes and gambas, because they're fretted, have somewhat the same problems as keyboards, but to a lesser degree, since you can adjust the intonation by rolling your finger. Some gambists split frets to make it easier to play the right enharmonic.

[wcbroccoli]

On a piano that's tuned to equal temperament, Ab and G# are the same note.

But on a viols, violins or voices, they are not the same note. This is especially noticeable when a consort of, say, viols, plays an chord, like an E-major or Ab-major.

[fugeman18]

More of that dying away feeling...

[TheCrazyCello]

This is a very interesting demonstration. This temperament almost appears to be constructed with the intent of giving a justly intoned C major scale and little else, the A having to be squeezed between the D and E 9th echoes the problem in just intonation that the choice of either the 5:3 or 27:16 frequency ratio between the A and the C will always lead to either a wolf 5th or 4th with the D or the E, except in this case neither is kept pure. The fact that every note beyond C major is set

[TheCrazyCello]

by pure 5ths alone kinda suggests playing in other keys hasn't even been considered at all. The choice of setting only 2 fifths from the E and the remainder from the C seems arbitrary, as other choices would have left some 3rds which weren't quite so wide...

The end result is quite bizarre. As you point out, playing in C major is pleasant except for some quite jarring open intervals involving the A, however even modulating to closely related keys seems to have fairly dire consequences...

[TheCrazyCello]

as a string player I wouldn't know where to begin trying to pitch anything when the fugue moves into A minor, as the root seems to be floating in the middle of nowhere. The F# - G sounds nicely wide for G major, but I can't figure out the G# - A. All in all it sounds more like an exercise in getting as close to one pure scale as possible theoretically, with little regard for what the end result actually sounds like!

[thebpl]

This was the important (and published) one during Kirnberger's lifetime and beyond.

The one we know as "Kirnberger III" was only part of a private letter from Kirnberger to Forkel. It wasn't published until 1871, which was more than 80 years after Kirnberger's death.

[Jackens]

Very interesting! But it's Kirnberger II, not III?

[lapsteelmando]

A little painful in spots but it sure is nice

to hear those thirds lock in.

[stringph]

The recording quality isn't good enough for me to hear all the supposed faults. Yes, anything with exposed D-A on the beat is fairly bad. If anything, this shows that Kirnberger isn't all that bad for people that don't listen super-closely.

Why didn't you go all the way through the fugue? The music is meant to be played all the way through, not dissected to highlight supposed problems. By playing one little spot enough times you can often create the impression that it sounds 'wrong'...

[thebpl]

It's a demonstration, Tom. Anybody who seriously wants to explore this point should tune a harpsichord in Kirnberger II themselves and play all the way through it themselves, at a variety of tempos, to hear exactly what it does in that temperament. My video is pedagogical, and intended to spark people's interest in doing that. If we're just here to nitpick about recording quality or incompleteness, well, I have better things to do. How about you?

[Isosphere]

What a fresh sound, compared with the sour vibrations of equal temperament. Modern electronic pianos often have the capability to select different temperaments and also allow to adjust them to the key of the music. Thanks to the Japanese electronic piano designers the classic musical tunings may find their way back to Europe from where they originated.

I love the Japanese people for that.

[DJPsionix]

TBH I disliked this temperament..

[Isosphere]

Which one, precisely?

There are many different ways to well tempered sound. Experimenting with Kirnberger I found that ist sounds well with minor chords.

[r0natello]

I've read that Bach and Kirnberger had a disagreement on tuning practices. As Bradley has stated in some of his articles, a lot of pieces that Bach (and a few others) wrote are good litmus tests for temperaments. Let's just say that Kirnberger's didn't fare so well.

[zade77]

interesting