It is just about equally as difficult to make a good half-hour show about ensemble tuning--but with diligence and intelligence, your result, may I write, here is "almost celestial." Wunderbar! Vielen Dank!
“Delight imperfectly” might become my new motto. Also, I hope some 21st C. composers will write some music that lies comfortably in the range of instruments and voices. That sounds nice. Great video.
This channel is unlike any other. This meets the standards of a university undergrad class. It's more than just a short 5 minute general survey. In my music history class I have had to write summaries of videos on this channel and I actually enjoyed it because I learned a lot that I never learned in my 4 years of university. I think that there should be a mandatory class about western temperament for all music students. Modern equal temperament is something most music students seem to take extremely for granted, and many have trouble performing with others for that reason. I am very surprised it doesn't seem to be a common standard for music schools, at least in the US where I live. I had this discussion with my applied lessons instructor and he agreed. This channel has taught me so much about it and gave me a better understanding of it. I appreciate it greatly and have subscribed. I plan on watching every video.
"They can delight imperfectly, as there are many defects both of the part of the instruments and the players..." As a recorder player, this sentence is particularly meaningful to me :-) Thank you Mr Rotem for your videos wich are always so interesting and didactic!
Thank you. Great work, as usual. As I happen to have heard "Le Malade Imaginaire" (collaboration of Molière and Marc-Antoine Charpentier, premiered in 1673) over and over in my early teens, thought I would mention the episode in first interlude where Polichinelle, set out to serenade his "tigress", first gets into quarrel with violins (which are occasionally and intentionally discordant, as if to resemble Bottrigari's description of a bad performance) and then fails to tune his lute because the strings will not hold in that weather. [It's the brilliant interpretation of William Christie with Les Arts Florrisants, specifically the 1990 recording released through Harmonia Mundi. Wonderful cast --Alain Trétout as Polichinelle, the late Jean Dautremay as Argan/Bachelierus and there's Dominique Visse, the counter-tenor, as the cherry on top.] --Waving from Istanbul.
Ottimo video, grazie per aver pubblicato un lavoro tanto chiaro e raffinato!... Se i musici di quei tempi avessero curato la loro preparazione come voi curate i vostri video, non ci sarebbero stati concerti stonati ed irritanti!! Moltissime grazie!
This excellently produced video informed me more about the historical reasons for different temperaments than literally everything else I've ever read or watched on the topic. Heck yeah.
beautiful information about early music critiques which is actually very modern for us as well. LISTENING is the real trick for any ensemble, no matter its combination.
Living in a family of non-musicians - and being the only one who is it, apart from my sister -, I think that this points regarding musical performance are the largest reasons why common people don't feel to understand or appreciate the so called "classical music". Human hear is really sensitive and honest to new things, that can lead to misunderstanding situations like in the treatise. I'm sure that everyone can understand the beauty of a good performance, if the PERFORMANCE IS GOOD.
Buried somewhere in Grove's is a letter I once read many decades ago. The author complains about the travesties of modern instruments and talks about how they are ruining music. Further on in the letter, one learns that he is talking about the introduction of horns into ensembles.
What a timeless discussion. Wonderful as usual. Btw- can you tell me the source of your background appearing at 1:43, showing a harp, a kithara, and a lyre? I build these instruments and there aren't many ancient Greek depictions of a frame (triangular) harp. Thanks. cheers from sunny Vienna, Scott
On the flute I don’t alter pitch by blowing more or less air, but rather by pivoting the hole towards me or away from my lips. You can do dynamics without “compensating” pitch.
pfew, that sounds better then liftong your fingers or whatever...at school we had a flute in music lesson and trying to make semi tones ....was... ehm challenging, but then im not a flute player
Thank you very much, super interesting. Your vids make me want to play my renaissance lute, but its so difficult to make it sounds good. Its very difficult. But i love to sight read and play little parts of these rare works. Thank you
You're right that it's hard for us modern musicians to quite grasp just how non-standardized music really was in those centuries, and it's really fascinating to directly hear the exact ways that tuning can go awry. I love that the primary practical advice to every musician trying to perform in such ensembles boils down to: "Listen to each other!" I can't think how many times my choir leaders over the years drummed that into the heads of the students, and most intensely when working with the smaller ensemble groups. The description of the four singers being very close together was really, really familiar in feeling for me, and it's kind of nice to understand that for all the things that are SO different in music today from the 16th Century.... there are some things that have never changed, like the love of music and the passion for making that music sound as good as you humanly can!
It’s interesting to see that blend, balance and intonation were not more commonly talked about in the 1500’s. Those are the big three I always talk about with students in large ensembles.
When I was learning music theory back in the 1960's the music reference was from a book called "The Well Tempered Clavier" by J S Bach Even back in Bach's time the principle of temperament in musical instrument tuning was well known.
Thank you Elam, although I am mighty sensitive about bad performances. This morning I have to tune 62 strings and will not have access to the instrument again until tonight at the gig. Like I said, I am mighty sensitive on this subject. .
On the viol I slide the finger lower than the fret (before the fret) and it acts almost like there are no frets, it offers a big gradient of lower notes. No need to bend.
I tend to roll my finger forward or back, and also use a little bit of bow pressure difference: it's not just the string being out of tune you need to work with, but also strings going false with age (in my experience, they mostly go sharp). Sliding it horizontally is a bit extreme, not something I'm used to doing.
i sent this video to a friend, but i titled the email "how women fixed music and created the orchestra" -a bit more positive title, yet still true to the content. happy holidays, thank you.
In these modern times, the "stable" instruments are set to equal temperament, and tuning problems are rare (though hitting wrong notes altogether is still very possible). I was surprised to hear that equal temperament was adopted for any instrument at all, even the fretted ones, in those ancient times. Adopting this system to keyboard and other "stable" instruments would seem an obvious thing to do -- at least when striving for a performance overall as perfectly in tune as feasible. But perhaps certain esthetics were no longer possible this way, so it was avoided. What is the earliest example of purposed equal temperament for instruments that would have had a choice otherwise? Was it considerably earlier than Bach?
Great episode dear Elam! I however still don't understand (I know I said it already to you once) why viols weren't tuned in meantone too, if this is so easy with one two double frets and sounds way better. If moving a fret is possible between pieces in the concert - then even without any double fret one can pretty much cover all needed notes always. Is it unhistorical somehow? So I wonder why it's written that way in many sources. I hope to understand it better one day. Not sure about lutes but I think they can actually do similar thing too... Greetings!
Tuning can make or break a performance, and the degree to which this happens depends on the type of music. For example, Renaissance and Baroque usually need pure temperament, but the practice has largely been lost unless you play historically informed performance. Jazz on the other hand usually works better with equal temperament.
Indeed the tuning of harpsichord and lute or viol to match together is very problematic, but the music of the period has generally very simple harmonic progressions, no remote keys modulations are used. Therefore it’s highly improbable that both G sharp and E flat occur in the same piece of music, so the frets of the lute or viol can be adjusted according to the key of the current piece, and re-adjusted for another piece in another key, this is not a big deal. Also a 6th comma meantone temperament (which is less extreme, but has nearly pure major thirds) can be used in the tuning of harpsichord, and if it happens to have also one or two split keys for playing enharmonics, that would be best. Anyway good harpsichordists knew how to hide or even suppress the „wrong” sound of a chord.
Contrary to what is put forth in this video, fretted instruments, including lutes and viols, CAN in fact play with meantone temperaments--and can be made to distinguish major and minor semitones, using a system of split and skewed frets. The simplistic demonstration with lute only addresses the impossibility of matching meantone keyboard temperament with a straight-across-the-fingerboard fret. This is misleading. For more information about this, consult David Dolata's book, "Meantone Temperaments on Lutes and Viols."
We live in so much better times, it's far easier nowadays to have all instruments in tune, so we can all enjoy much better music and performances. 😏 I guess Bottrigaro (Bottrigari?) would have been a great fan of AutoTune.
Because once you plucked the string of your harp, the pitch of the note can't be changed, as it could be on a violin where you can move your finger to correct the note, if it is too high or too low. We don't speak here about temperament itself, but about to ajust the notes to a temperament (by extension, play "in tune" or "out of tune"). On stable instruments (harps, keyboards), you have to tune the instrument in a certain temperament : if the note is too high or too low, you can't correct in another way but re-tuning the instrument. On unstable instruments you can correct it : for string instruments, by moving your fingers on fingerboards ; for wind instruments, by changing fingers position on the holes or the intensity of blowing, as it is showed in this video. So this is the point : unstable instruments can adjust notes "live", even if they are out of tune or play with other instruments playing out of tune (depending of the tuning or of the ability of the player...). Thing that can't be done on stable instruments
I should add that we never get a bad performance from Early Music Sources. Always pitch perfect and tuned like a fine machine.
wake up babe, new Early Music Sources video just dropped
REAL
sic infernum!
First like then watch as usual ❤
Yeah
It is just about equally as difficult to make a good half-hour show about ensemble tuning--but with diligence and intelligence, your result, may I write, here is "almost celestial." Wunderbar! Vielen Dank!
“Delight imperfectly” might become my new motto. Also, I hope some 21st C. composers will write some music that lies comfortably in the range of instruments and voices. That sounds nice. Great video.
zing!
This channel is unlike any other. This meets the standards of a university undergrad class. It's more than just a short 5 minute general survey. In my music history class I have had to write summaries of videos on this channel and I actually enjoyed it because I learned a lot that I never learned in my 4 years of university. I think that there should be a mandatory class about western temperament for all music students. Modern equal temperament is something most music students seem to take extremely for granted, and many have trouble performing with others for that reason. I am very surprised it doesn't seem to be a common standard for music schools, at least in the US where I live. I had this discussion with my applied lessons instructor and he agreed. This channel has taught me so much about it and gave me a better understanding of it. I appreciate it greatly and have subscribed. I plan on watching every video.
"They can delight imperfectly, as there are many defects both of the part of the instruments and the players..."
As a recorder player, this sentence is particularly meaningful to me :-)
Thank you Mr Rotem for your videos wich are always so interesting and didactic!
Thanks for such an excellent episode! You all have outdone yourselves again.
What a treasure this channel is, incredible content and always so well researched, Thank you!!!!
Thank you. Great work, as usual.
As I happen to have heard "Le Malade Imaginaire" (collaboration of Molière and Marc-Antoine Charpentier, premiered in 1673) over and over in my early teens, thought I would mention the episode in first interlude where Polichinelle, set out to serenade his "tigress", first gets into quarrel with violins (which are occasionally and intentionally discordant, as if to resemble Bottrigari's description of a bad performance) and then fails to tune his lute because the strings will not hold in that weather. [It's the brilliant interpretation of William Christie with Les Arts Florrisants, specifically the 1990 recording released through Harmonia Mundi. Wonderful cast --Alain Trétout as Polichinelle, the late Jean Dautremay as Argan/Bachelierus and there's Dominique Visse, the counter-tenor, as the cherry on top.] --Waving from Istanbul.
Ottimo video, grazie per aver pubblicato un lavoro tanto chiaro e raffinato!... Se i musici di quei tempi avessero curato la loro preparazione come voi curate i vostri video, non ci sarebbero stati concerti stonati ed irritanti!!
Moltissime grazie!
This excellently produced video informed me more about the historical reasons for different temperaments than literally everything else I've ever read or watched on the topic. Heck yeah.
beautiful information about early music critiques which is actually very modern for us as well. LISTENING is the real trick for any ensemble, no matter its combination.
Fascinating research thank you for continuing to educate and entertain me 😊
Living in a family of non-musicians - and being the only one who is it, apart from my sister -, I think that this points regarding musical performance are the largest reasons why common people don't feel to understand or appreciate the so called "classical music". Human hear is really sensitive and honest to new things, that can lead to misunderstanding situations like in the treatise. I'm sure that everyone can understand the beauty of a good performance, if the PERFORMANCE IS GOOD.
Fascinating. Thank you for your generosity. I have learned so much.
i love this channel so much please never stop making videos
This just highlights how singers and musicians shouldn’t only judge music on mechanics. 😊
Very illuminating. as always Thanks.
Excellent episode, as usual, and Hi, Phillip!
Buried somewhere in Grove's is a letter I once read many decades ago. The author complains about the travesties of modern instruments and talks about how they are ruining music. Further on in the letter, one learns that he is talking about the introduction of horns into ensembles.
It is always such a wonder to learn about Early Music.
At 23:25 is the exact reason I quit going to the old music concert the department was giving when I was in school 50 years ago.
Thank you for another inspiring episode. Immediately borrowed the translation of the dialogue from the library. Much Love
very nice channel!! Congratulations on the information and videos!!!
What a timeless discussion. Wonderful as usual.
Btw- can you tell me the source of your background appearing at 1:43, showing a harp, a kithara, and a lyre? I build these instruments and there aren't many ancient Greek depictions of a frame (triangular) harp. Thanks.
cheers from sunny Vienna, Scott
I think it is a composite image based on three (separate) iconographic sources.
@@dbadagna I suspected that as well.
On the flute I don’t alter pitch by blowing more or less air, but rather by pivoting the hole towards me or away from my lips. You can do dynamics without “compensating” pitch.
pfew, that sounds better then liftong your fingers or whatever...at school we had a flute in music lesson and trying to make semi tones ....was... ehm challenging, but then im not a flute player
Thank you very much, super interesting. Your vids make me want to play my renaissance lute, but its so difficult to make it sounds good. Its very difficult. But i love to sight read and play little parts of these rare works. Thank you
Do you have a renaissance lute ?
@@classicgameplay10 yes , made by renzo salvador in liège
You're right that it's hard for us modern musicians to quite grasp just how non-standardized music really was in those centuries, and it's really fascinating to directly hear the exact ways that tuning can go awry. I love that the primary practical advice to every musician trying to perform in such ensembles boils down to: "Listen to each other!"
I can't think how many times my choir leaders over the years drummed that into the heads of the students, and most intensely when working with the smaller ensemble groups. The description of the four singers being very close together was really, really familiar in feeling for me, and it's kind of nice to understand that for all the things that are SO different in music today from the 16th Century.... there are some things that have never changed, like the love of music and the passion for making that music sound as good as you humanly can!
I love it! Thanks for share!
It’s interesting to see that blend, balance and intonation were not more commonly talked about in the 1500’s. Those are the big three I always talk about with students in large ensembles.
When I was learning music theory back in the 1960's the music reference was from a book called "The Well Tempered Clavier" by J S Bach
Even back in Bach's time the principle of temperament in musical instrument tuning was well known.
Fascinating as always😍😍
Thank you Elam, although I am mighty sensitive about bad performances. This morning I have to tune 62 strings and will not have access to the instrument again until tonight at the gig. Like I said, I am mighty sensitive on this subject. .
o my god....individually?? is there not a less time consuming way of doing that?
FANTASTIC!!!!
Beautiful 🥰 thank you so much
I'm a simple man: I see a new video from EMS, I click it
My weekend got blessed with this new video
Congratulations for the 100K!!
Merci beaucoup. Nice description of Barbershop Quartets.
I learned some things again, thank you...
Do you think I could book Bottrigari to come speak at my student orchestra rehearsal?
Thank you for this fascinating episode.
Thank you for this very useful video!
Once again, a fascinating presentation-thank you😊
estoy completamente de acuerdo con Bottrigari y Artusi....ojalá hoy en día todos los músicos tuviéramos en cuenta todos sus argumentos!
14:13 - what are the "other solutions" for bringing fretted string instruments more into line with meantone temperament? The use of tastini?
Check the footnote 🤓
Thank you for another great episode! 👏 🙂
Very thought provoking! Once again a very well made video.
I LOVED this! Especially those nuns. I mean, how could they possibly be so good when they weren’t even taught by men?
yes, 2of the 3 it was unreal why they could be so good were because they were woman. unbelievable. but then....it was the time and the place i guess.
Enjoyed the show! I laughed so hard when the lutenist at 3:00 appeared! // Love the pig. *= )* *thx*
On the viol I slide the finger lower than the fret (before the fret) and it acts almost like there are no frets, it offers a big gradient of lower notes. No need to bend.
I tend to roll my finger forward or back, and also use a little bit of bow pressure difference: it's not just the string being out of tune you need to work with, but also strings going false with age (in my experience, they mostly go sharp). Sliding it horizontally is a bit extreme, not something I'm used to doing.
Thank you!!
i sent this video to a friend, but i titled the email "how women fixed music and created the orchestra" -a bit more positive title, yet still true to the content. happy holidays, thank you.
finally this ever-confusing topic clearly (physically) explained! 👍
Absolut genial 👍❤️🙏
The performance your ensemble did in Edmonton last week was definitely GOOD! 💖
😂2:10 I didn’t know early jazz was THAT early!
In these modern times, the "stable" instruments are set to equal temperament, and tuning problems are rare (though hitting wrong notes altogether is still very possible). I was surprised to hear that equal temperament was adopted for any instrument at all, even the fretted ones, in those ancient times. Adopting this system to keyboard and other "stable" instruments would seem an obvious thing to do -- at least when striving for a performance overall as perfectly in tune as feasible. But perhaps certain esthetics were no longer possible this way, so it was avoided. What is the earliest example of purposed equal temperament for instruments that would have had a choice otherwise? Was it considerably earlier than Bach?
Great episode dear Elam! I however still don't understand (I know I said it already to you once) why viols weren't tuned in meantone too, if this is so easy with one two double frets and sounds way better. If moving a fret is possible between pieces in the concert - then even without any double fret one can pretty much cover all needed notes always. Is it unhistorical somehow? So I wonder why it's written that way in many sources. I hope to understand it better one day. Not sure about lutes but I think they can actually do similar thing too... Greetings!
I'm happy to know that I'm not alone considering impossible a task to "afinar" my simple guitar!😅
I got a treble viol recently and it SUCKS to tune. I can totally see why people flocked to the violin.
Großartig.
Elam Rotem comes pretty close to perfect.
Wonderful job!
15:45 where are these sounds taken from? I know them! EDIT: Is it Duolingo?! 😅
Tuning can make or break a performance, and the degree to which this happens depends on the type of music. For example, Renaissance and Baroque usually need pure temperament, but the practice has largely been lost unless you play historically informed performance. Jazz on the other hand usually works better with equal temperament.
Love your videos
First time i hear Artusi say anything positive is about the san vito nuns!
Indeed the tuning of harpsichord and lute or viol to match together is very problematic, but the music of the period has generally very simple harmonic progressions, no remote keys modulations are used. Therefore it’s highly improbable that both G sharp and E flat occur in the same piece of music, so the frets of the lute or viol can be adjusted according to the key of the current piece, and re-adjusted for another piece in another key, this is not a big deal. Also a 6th comma meantone temperament (which is less extreme, but has nearly pure major thirds) can be used in the tuning of harpsichord, and if it happens to have also one or two split keys for playing enharmonics, that would be best. Anyway good harpsichordists knew how to hide or even suppress the „wrong” sound of a chord.
Contrary to what is put forth in this video, fretted instruments, including lutes and viols, CAN in fact play with meantone temperaments--and can be made to distinguish major and minor semitones, using a system of split and skewed frets. The simplistic demonstration with lute only addresses the impossibility of matching meantone keyboard temperament with a straight-across-the-fingerboard fret. This is misleading. For more information about this, consult David Dolata's book, "Meantone Temperaments on Lutes and Viols."
I was hoping you would demonstrate with an ensemble of participants. But maybe you will do so in future
Werent old tuning systems more precise than the modern 12 tone version? That would probably make minor errors more noticeable
Well, there you have it.
We live in so much better times, it's far easier nowadays to have all instruments in tune, so we can all enjoy much better music and performances. 😏
I guess Bottrigaro (Bottrigari?) would have been a great fan of AutoTune.
But isn't it simple ? If bad performances were NOT bad, we'd have a contradiction ! QED 😁
👏👏👏
Who was the target market for books like this in 1594?
awsome
Is it Vincenzo again?
3:05 thought an alarm went off or some shit
The moment the CASIO appears... 😅❤
🎉
TREBLE [=] THREE. I FORGOTTED ABOUT THAT. III. XIII3 TRY TRI TRE
nice
So, basically, nothing has changed since then.
Imagine going to that concert back then and hearing them all out of tune 😂
Kunst der Fugue - please. 😢
e my harp to different temperaments and dont understand why it is classified as being a stable instrument
Because once you plucked the string of your harp, the pitch of the note can't be changed, as it could be on a violin where you can move your finger to correct the note, if it is too high or too low. We don't speak here about temperament itself, but about to ajust the notes to a temperament (by extension, play "in tune" or "out of tune"). On stable instruments (harps, keyboards), you have to tune the instrument in a certain temperament : if the note is too high or too low, you can't correct in another way but re-tuning the instrument. On unstable instruments you can correct it : for string instruments, by moving your fingers on fingerboards ; for wind instruments, by changing fingers position on the holes or the intensity of blowing, as it is showed in this video. So this is the point : unstable instruments can adjust notes "live", even if they are out of tune or play with other instruments playing out of tune (depending of the tuning or of the ability of the player...). Thing that can't be done on stable instruments
Great music is timeless. So is suck.
❤🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤🤍
פוצים מתי תפשיר את פוץ נולד 2023😂😂😂
'Promo SM'