# Beethoven's Tempest Sonata on 19th Century instruments, a feast for HIP enthusiasts!



## David Pinnegar (Jan 16, 2019)

A pianist friend and I have been testing the sounds of different instruments.

Here's Beethoven's Tempest composed in 1801/1802 played on an 1802 piano by Stodart tuned to Meantone. Many 18th century instruments were tuned to Meantone. The tuning doesn't work well at all for most of Beethoven's work but here becomes an Ultra Violet light or X-Ray revealing previous layers of a painting. The connexion between the work and Shakespeare's play "The Enchanted Isle" was formerly only anecdotal, but with the tuning here passages become strange, ethereal and supernaturally potent . . . so the plot of Shakespeare and Beethoven's Sonata is really worth researching rather more.

In listening, forget our predisposition to our modern tuned pianos as being "in tune".

For a precursor to the soundscape here's Pacebel exploiting F Minor





I'm not saying that Beethoven's work should be performed like this . . . 




but isn't the result interesting?

In comparison in my view the same piece performed on the Beethoven Broadwood model 1819 instrument





We will be comparing the string gauges with the Stodart as for me the Stodart treble is better.

Here it's on an 1854 Emerich Betsy, first movement


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## David Pinnegar (Jan 16, 2019)

We then did the experiment on Charles Hallé's 1858 Broadwood which was probably in the showroom when Clara Schumann visited London. This particular instrument is specifically documented in the thesis by Alastair Laurence in 1998 "The Evolution of the Broadwood Grand Piano"

The instrument was first tuned to equal temperament and then we retuned to an unequal temperament. Kirnberger III with 7 perfect fifths in the scale 




and the comparison starts at 8:31 although the effect is more present live than perhaps in recording.

Finally an instrument of 1905, again another Broadwood, a baby grand




but in the course of the outside recital the tuning changed as the evening temperature dropped.

I hope this might be a feast for HIP enthusiasts of various brands and those who think that music should escape HIP entirely even.

Best wishes

David Pinnegar


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Thanks for these, especially the Pachelbel. What sort of meantone was the organ tuned to? 

That chaconne is attractive, but generally Pachelbel is a composer whose keyboard music I find mostly rather tame, I wonder if temperament could help. 

The Beethoven sonata isn’t a piece I’m terribly interested in at the moment I’m afraid, so I haven’t listened to the examples.


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## David Pinnegar (Jan 16, 2019)

The Organ is tuned to 1/4 comma meantone, the standard meantone tuning.

Temperament does help. It provides the vibrational substrate upon which harmony and disharmony is built. At the start of 




I started with the opening of the Couperin Mass for Convents. This piece lurches from harmony and sweetness, to pain as a metaphor for Christ's life. This is bland and flat in Equal Temperament, and I go on to demonstrate the function of temperament in Mozart's organ fantasias, normally performed on huge instruments to blow you away, but actually written for sensitive listening on a mechanical clock organ of only two ranks of pipes - which in Meantone could express the emotions connected with the art installation for which they were composed. In equal temperament it's lost, glossed over.

The Beethoven is interesting as a standard piece on which to compare piano sounds. Again the Meantone temperament of the first example reveals the normally hidden connexion to the Shakespeare play . . . and this performer is worth studying. Many talk about Beethoven composing orchestrally for the piano but when this is lost, again the meaning is lost. My friend talks for instance of that repeated bass octave as the sound of the timpani and in another place he said - "By the way, in this passage I was thinking of the 'cellos worreting away". He once demonstrated in the Waldstein passages where he said "listen to the violins coming in, and here the flutes". In another passage of the Tempest he said that the dynamics marked were incredibly important, going from ff to pp in the same phrase - as one section of the orchestra would give way to another section.

So perhaps the reason why you haven't been very keen on Beethoven is that you've heard performances only from people who don't understand the music. So many performances I hear are percussive, with one note constantly interrupting the previous note. So many performers just bang out Beethoven and come to the piano as an extension of the percussion department rather than having heard the ability of the instrument to sing. But to get it to sing requires absolute attention to phrasing technique so that the next note doesn't overpower the previous note. This is why masterclasses from a senior and understanding performer are so important to new musicians.

This is even more important in parts of the world with many pianos but not a long heritage of understanding where the music came from.

Best wishes

David Pinnegar


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Help me out here. What is meantone?


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## David Pinnegar (Jan 16, 2019)

Meantone is a system of tuning which produces sweet pure thirds. The tone in between is exactly in the middle, thus mean tone, as in the average. The standard equal temperament tries to get fifths as near to perfect as possible, all equally, but this stretches the thirds sharply so many people complained about music becoming discordant when equal temperament became more universal.

It's for this reason that re-examination of the meantone soundscape becomes worthwhile as well as the compromise temperaments in between which can bring very magical qualities to music written to exploit them. They can also improve the tonal resonance of modern instruments. 
Best wishes 

David Pinnegar


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Triplets said:


> Help me out here. What is meantone?


This can be really big thing in keyboard music, and I'm sure David is right to explore it vigorously. The difference between a piece on a non-equally tuned instrument and on an equally tuned one can be the difference between harmonically lifeless and harmonically thrilling -- because so many C 18 and C 17 composers were writing music to exploit the dissonances.

The big eye opener for me is that non equal tunings were possibly the ones that composers were writing for in the late C18 and even the C 19 century. Organs were steadily undergoing a transition in the early C18 to equal temperament, and I'd always just assumed that the same was true for other keyboards -- and that the Mozart, Haydn, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt etc sound is equal temperament.


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

Triplets said:


> Help me out here. What is meantone?


If you want to play in a perfect intonation without any extra beating in the chords, you run into a very small interval that makes D to A in C major a flat "wolf" fifth. Alternatively, you can get 3 perfect fifths (the interval from C to G) and a pure minor third = we run again in the same small interval that exceeds the octave. This interval is called syntonic or Ptolemaic comma and can be very annoying melodically and harmonically.
Tempering it leaves us with a system where the perfect fifths are flat = meantone (the name is that, because 10/9 and 9/8 are both whole tones in pure intonation; in meantone they are the same thing, because the difference - the syntonic comma - between them is gone).
In Renaissance European classical music is in meantone (I think that most arabic music is NOT in meantone, it's more pure, but hard to work with harmonically - see 34 equal division per octave for an example of non-meantone system). 12 ET (the standard modern tuning) is also meantone, but the harmonic accuracy is very low and major thirds are basically out of tune - in France for example musicians were sacrificing the tuning of every other interval except the major thirds.

Here is the interval content of 1/4 comma meantone tuning:

1: 5 76.09756 cents
1: 7 117.07317 cents

2: 10 193.17073 cents
2: 2 234.14634 cents

3: 3 269.26829 cents
3: 9 310.24390 cents

4: 8 386.34146 cents
4: 4 427.31707 cents

5: 1 462.43902 cents
5: 11 503.41463 cents

6: 6 579.51220 cents
6: 6 620.48780 cents

7: 11 696.58537 cents
7: 1 737.56098 cents

8: 4 772.68293 cents
8: 8 813.65854 cents

9: 9 889.75610 cents
9: 3 930.73171 cents

10: 2 965.85366 cents
10: 10 1006.82927 cents

11: 7 1082.92683 cents
11: 5 1123.90244 cents
Number of different intervals: 22 = 2.00000 / class

So, we have a few intervals that are useful only for blues music (like the very flat minor third at 269.26829 cents). These "out of tune" intervals were often times mapped to the black keys. The wolf sharp 737.56098 cents fifths goes to the most remote tonality - at the end of circle of fifths - you won't hear C->F# or similar moves in old music unless it was specifically tuned to do it.

The problems with HIP are: even if you tune to meantone, you need a historical piano or whatever instrument you play (and these "pianos" during Mozart and Beethoven's time were not even pianos, but some hybrid between cembalo and modern piano); and there was no way to accurately tune back then, so much of all the tuning theory was just "theory" and in practice they were tuning using their ears, arriving at some kind of unequal tuning- these type of systems spanned the whole hype over the colour of different musical keys.
See this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_temperament

These unequal type tunings are the opposite of equal tuning, while they allow freedom in modulation, they have all kinds of intervals, some of them perfect, some - way worse than these in meantone or equal temperaments.

This is the interval contentent of Werckmeister 3 from 1681 - a famous well tempered tuning:

1: 2 256/243 90.225 cents limma, Pythagorean minor second
1: 4 96.09000 cents
1: 2 101.95500 cents
1: 4 107.82000 cents
2: 2 192.18000 cents
2: 4 198.04500 cents
2: 6 9/8 203.910 cents major whole tone
3: 4 32/27 294.135 cents Pythagorean minor third
3: 5 300.00000 cents
3: 2 305.86500 cents
3: 1 311.73001 cents
4: 2 390.22500 cents
4: 3 396.08999 cents
4: 4 401.95500 cents
4: 3 81/64 407.820 cents Pythagorean major third
5: 8 4/3 498.045 cents perfect fourth
5: 4 503.91000 cents
6: 1 1024/729 588.270 cents Pythagorean diminished fifth
6: 4 594.13499 cents
6: 2 600.00000 cents
6: 4 605.86500 cents
6: 1 729/512 611.730 cents Pythagorean tritone
7: 4 696.09000 cents
7: 8 3/2 701.955 cents perfect fifth
8: 3 128/81 792.180 cents Pythagorean minor sixth
8: 4 798.04499 cents
8: 3 803.91000 cents
8: 2 809.77500 cents
9: 1 888.26999 cents
9: 2 894.13500 cents
9: 5 900.00000 cents
9: 4 27/16 905.865 cents Pythagorean major sixth
10: 6 16/9 996.090 cents Pythagorean minor seventh
10: 4 1001.95500 cents
10: 2 1007.82000 cents
11: 4 1092.18000 cents
11: 2 1098.04500 cents
11: 4 1103.91000 cents
11: 2 243/128 1109.775 cents Pythagorean major seventh
Number of different intervals: 39 = 3.54545 / class

There exist tunings where each intervals is unique, so you can imagine how long the list would be...


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## BabyGiraffe (Feb 24, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> The big eye opener for me is that non equal tunings were possibly the ones that composers were writing for in the late C18 and even the C 19 century. Organs were steadily undergoing a transition in the early C18 to equal temperament, and I'd always just assumed that the same was true for other keyboards -- and that the Mozart, Haydn, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt etc sound is equal temperament.


More like mid-19th (or even late) century... Mozart and Haydn and Beethoven were certainly not in equal tuning.

Unfortunately, there are some myths that even Bach was supposedly in equal tuning... despite that one of the famous well-tempered systems is that of his students - Kirnberger... What a nonsense.

(Piano timbres have also inharmonicity, so the optimal piano tuning is not something like meantone, but something like 12ET with even worse (stretched) octaves. )


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

What would be fabulous is to have a list of Mozart Beethoven Schubert etc piano recordings which use non equal temperaments. 

Does Siegbert Rampe use non equal temperament for his Mozart? How were the pianos at the Beethovenhaus Bonn tuned in Demus’s recordings? Does Tom Beghin use non equal temperament for his Beethoven and Haydn? What about Badura Skoda and Bilson?How were the pianos tuned for The Real Chopin . . . ? My current favourite living Chopinist, John Khouri, is silent about tuning, as were the old brigade like Cortot. 

My assumption has been that they’re all equal, and my ears haven’t told me differently, but this is the sort of music which is a bit peripheral to my main concerns in fact, so just maybe I’ve not been listening carefully - I’d love to find out that there were harmonies that I’d missed and which make the music more exciting. 

In Bach at least one pianist who uses a modern instrument is exploring temperament (Pietro da Maria), I haven’t explored his recordings much because the style doesn’t appeal. I don’t know what he’s doing with Chopin etc. As far as I know all the the pianists who use concert grands in later music haven’t explored this question, which just could be vital. . .. with the exception of the ones who get David to tune the instrument . . . !


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## David Pinnegar (Jan 16, 2019)

In my reading of numerous sources of temperament literature I think Bilson rings a bell in terms of having recorded in unequal. But there is mention of a historical recording some time ago where a famous player recorded in equal because he felt that audiences weren't then ready for unequal.

The paper which I presented in part to the Friends of the London Mozart Players has an annotated bibliography in Appendix 4 from memory hopefully usefully documenting the progress of rediscovery and experiment of unequal temperaments beyond Mozart and Meantone, through into the 19th century so possibly if you haven't seen it already there might be useful resources potentially there in your quest https://www.academia.edu/37951978/T...antasias_K594_and_K608_for_Mechanical_C lock

Some potentially helpful recordings, possibly some of which I've exemplified with videos embedded in posts here but certainly not all, might include, and not all by the same performer




 is the 1802 Stodart with Beethoven - the second movement is better and the Chopin 2nd sonata on a Bechstein, both Kellner.





 is my explanation of chromatic tuning..

Starting with Bach on harpsichord - 



 Bach on Harpsichord
- see the comment - this is Kirnberger

Then Kellner




 Bach on piano




 Haydn




 Chopin on Steinway Boston




 Brahms violin sonata with Steinway




 Chopin 2nd sonata 




 Mozart violin sonata B flat




 Chopin Ballade 4




 Chopin 24 preludes 







 Chopin 2nd sonata in unequal and equal temperament




 Chopin on Grotein Steinweg. This instrument brings to life the singing thirds.




 effect on melody




 Gershwin




 Debussy




 Benjamin Britten

https://jungleboffin.com/mp4/jerzy-owczarz-2006-unequal-temperament/
I presume that this might have been my first year of experimentation and of starting to learn to tune Kellner. I had not developed then of course what I know and appreciate now by harmonic tuning.
https://jungleboffin.com/mp4/jerzy-owczarz-2007/
https://jungleboffin.com/mp4/jong-gyung-park-unequal-temperament/
https://jungleboffin.com/mp4/jill-crossland-unequal-tempered-fortepiano/
https://jungleboffin.com/mp4/joanna-powell-cello/
https://jungleboffin.com/mp4/julia-o-riodan-jennifer-carter/

It was in meeting my Italian friend that my experiments gelled into a dimension of serious quest rather than feeling to me an outcast of the musical community on the fringe




and our research now became a quest not merely from my amateur observation but from a duality of perspective. "Why" said Plato "need I look through only one eye when I can see through two". Before having the privilege to meet this pianist I'd been able to see only through one, and I hope that in posting recordings and thoughts here we will be able now to see collectively not just through one, nor two, but the many of us who read this forum, and through the many perhaps who might ask and encourage their piano tuner to tune to an unequal temperament.

I've chosen Kellner as what I use not for any reason of historic authenticity, but because it works, works beautifully, audibly and yet subliminally.

Kellner uses the key of F as rather the best key, so is really great for accompanying brass in F and Bb, but strings can play with it too without difficulty. From memory I think he gets the C to E of the C major triad to beat at the same rate as the C to G, with C to F being perfect and F to A in the middle C octave singing at around 4 to 6 beats per second.

Kirnberger III is a similar temperament also using 7 perfect fifths in which C-E is a perfect pure third.

Alastair Laurence's Eureka Temperament based on Handel's tuning instructions starts with nice triads in the home keys, so in the spirit of starting at the Kellner C major concept.




At 16:49 is Alexandra Kremakova trying out the temperament on the very special Blasser harpsichord at auction https://auctions.dreweatts.com/auction-024/itemDetails/176/59824

Many of these instruments went to China whilst others from the Colt Collection went to South Korea. Our historical resources of such instruments have been seriously depleted, as well as ending up in museums where access to organological examination and playing them can be difficult to say the least.

Here's a Beethoven Sonata on the 1802 Stodart tuned to Kellner




the second movement of which sings and is very beautiful from 06:22. Perhaps the pianist here overloaded the instrument in the first movement but it's fascinating for me in the context of the proximity to the 18th century and the familiarity that all would have had with the hammered dulcimer.

Here's an important Mozart sonata on the 1802 in Meantone - for which attunement of the ears to the Pacebel at the start of this thread is important -




Has anyone heard anything this sad? (Apart from the paucity of my amateur playing of course . . . ) Some people cannot get through past half this recording on account of feelings of grief. And that was what was intended. The Masonic 3rd degree rite of being buried in the grave, and then coming to life again in the third movement.

Here's an experiment in my Mozart presentation assisted by Jong Gyung Park who's a great friend and good sport helping me with Alexandra Kremakova, sadly only on Yamaha Clavinova tuned to Meantone, but in which I believe there to be a beauty in the twisting of our ears -


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## David Pinnegar (Jan 16, 2019)

Returning to Beethoven, there's a really very curious and little known piece - Op 39, here on organ





He brings the piece to a hideous focus on an Ab chord disgusting in Meantone. Deliberately objecting to Meantone or glorifying it? Should we look at this in a temperament such as Kirnberger or Kellner instead? Or was that Ab crisis deliberate and part of the emotional soundscape?

In my opinion with the palpably declining interest in classical music it's appropriate to put the question of temperament on the agenda for discussion, experiment and performance, and to escape the plain boring and tyrannical grey of Equal Temperament enforced by technicians and companies hiring to our concert halls and live performance on Radio 3.

I hope the recordings I've posted will be the start of infectious quests and perhaps a change of attitudes to more openmindedness and in the interests of reinvigoration of enthusiasm for classical music.

Best wishes

David Pinnegar


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## David Pinnegar (Jan 16, 2019)

In response to a few queries I hadn't seen above I hope that my ventures into experiment using Meantone and here Kirnberger on the Clavinova (mislabelled on the Video annotation) played from a Midi file




demonstrate that we don't need original instruments for the exploitation of these temperaments nor for their research.

Werkmeister III was one of the first "Well Temperaments" but uses 8 perfect fifths and is crude to some extent, particularly in B major which is really foul, so the Kirnberger III modification was a significant improvement.

In the past decade people such as Fred Sturm have pilloried Jorgensen after his death in 2009, and about whom I hadn't heard when I started my quests in tuning. Jorgensen might have made an error of judgment or two but he did sterling work from the 1980s onwards and I believe the criticism to be unfair, misguided and prejudiced. Detractors of Unequal Temperaments who see wrongly all research having derived from Jorgensen, which in my case it is certainly not, say that Kirnberger III wasn't published until late 20th century research brought it to light. But that assertion is wrong - it was known as Prinz or Aron-Neidhard from 1779 or so and therefore a candidate for use. A strong candidate in my opinion.

In such matters there seem to have been more egos fighting temperaments than experiments being done to hear what the music reveals when unequal temperaments of different types are used, or what the harmonic tunings can do for the sound, the resonance and warmth of the modern piano. And in the past decade those egos have been defending the status quo, with expertise in the Baroque or in 20th century South American music of rather a different nature to Chopin and Beethoven, and with little understanding of the early 19th Century soundscape from which we gain glimpses from Chopin's letters and opinions of different types and styles of pianos. The result has been a blockage of encouragement to technicians to explore or even allow exploration, a maintenance of the boredom of the status quo of universal grey, and a continued decline of classical music interest as performance becomes more repetitive in mechanical precision with decreasing understanding of the emotional language of sound.

Best wishes

David Pinnegar


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

Mandryka said:


> What would be fabulous is to have a list of Mozart Beethoven Schubert etc piano recordings which use non equal temperaments.


In response to the other recent threads about HIP Romantic music, I've been idly googling to try to find more information about the tunings used in various solo piano recordings of Beethoven et al... and have turned up nothing! Except this old thread, which prompts me to echo Mandryka - I would love to compare recordings in different temperaments side by side, or at least just to know what it is I'm hearing. And all these youtube demonstrations are wonderful for getting the point across but they don't quite compare to studio recordings!


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## David Pinnegar (Jan 16, 2019)

cheregi said:


> In response to the other recent threads about HIP Romantic music, I've been idly googling to try to find more information about the tunings used in various solo piano recordings of Beethoven et al... and have turned up nothing! Except this old thread, which prompts me to echo Mandryka - I would love to compare recordings in different temperaments side by side, or at least just to know what it is I'm hearing. And all these youtube demonstrations are wonderful for getting the point across but they don't quite compare to studio recordings!


Yes - you will find it difficult. Most concert halls have Steinways and Steinway don't allow other tuners to tune instruments in their care and most musicians don't seem to know that tuning is even an option.

However, here's a recording of a top Fazioli which I tuned recorded with professional microphones - 








Look up Enid Katahn - Beethoven in the Temperaments.

I'm willing to go anywhere to tune for any good concert and any recording.










And connoisseur musicians won't have anyone else . . . 









Best wishes

David P


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

David Pinnegar said:


> Yes - you will find it difficult. Most concert halls have Steinways and Steinway don't allow other tuners to tune instruments in their care and most musicians don't seem to know that tuning is even an option.


Thank you for the response! Yes, I'm excited to listen to the Enid Katahn recording(s)... I didn't know that Steinway doesn't let other tuners tune their instruments, that seems like a remarkably silly restriction. I'm excited for knowledge of non-ET tunings (within standard repertoire) to continue to spread.


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## David Pinnegar (Jan 16, 2019)

Three concerts this year explored unequal tuning effects.




 with an 1886 Bechstein with a variation of Kellner and an 1869 Broadwood in Meantone




 with an 1802 Stodart in Kirnberger III and 1856 Emerich Betsy with a variation of Kellner




 with the Bechstein in a variation of Kellner after revoicing hammers.

Best wishes

David P


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## TwoFlutesOneTrumpet (Aug 31, 2011)

The Tempest on the 1802 piano sounds awful when I have the sound of modern grand pianos to compare it to. Thank goodness for modern grand pianos.


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## David Pinnegar (Jan 16, 2019)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> The Tempest on the 1802 piano sounds awful when I have the sound of modern grand pianos to compare it to. Thank goodness for modern grand pianos.


In the spirit of Two Flutes One Trumpet the simulation of a Mozart Fantasia or two which was said to be akin to the sound of a couple of flutes and a bassoon might be relevant - 









Meantone was commonplace and 18th century sensibilities very different and 



 will persuade you of that.

Here's the same piano tuned to a Well Temperament rather than a Meantone.





Happy New Year!

David P


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

TwoFlutesOneTrumpet said:


> The Tempest on the 1802 piano sounds awful when I have the sound of modern grand pianos to compare it to. Thank goodness for modern grand pianos.


Consider this- (Kristian Bezuidenhout on HIP Mozart)




the same more or less can be said of Beethoven's Tempest.


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