Why I hate Vallotti – cont.

The first thing is the “fudge” factor. It may seem dogmatic to point this out, but a temperament that was almost published in 1779 and another published in 1800 are not the best historical choices for Baroque music. Granted, Vallotti claimed to have worked out his system by 1728 and, presumably, anyone who happened to travel to Padua and ask him about it after that might have used it, but it wasn’t widely known like the published systems of Werckmeister and Neidhardt, if at all. Even Young himself seems oblivious to Vallotti’s work: “As far as I know, most of these observations are new” (p. 146). If Vallotti’s temperament weren’t so universally used today, perhaps I wouldn’t care, but it has become so completely accepted as a good, historical solution, that people have stopped noticing that the historical evidence for its use in Baroque music is not that strong. An analogy is the situation in Baroque trumpet performance today, where three and even four tone holes for facilitating certain harmonics have become universally used on slender or non–existent historical evidence, but they work so well that hardly anyone one wants to “rock the boat.” It’s time to question the historical position of Vallotti for Baroque music and, if it’s weak, then to explore some of the alternative circulating temperaments that were known earlier in the 18th century, like those of Johann Georg Neidhardt.

My second complaint about Vallotti–and Young, by extension–comes from my position as an educator. It may seem unfair to criticize a temperament on the basis of complexity when the musical results achieved by professional musicians are often excellent. But so long as young musicians continue to be trained in ET, this will be a problem and we might as well face it: the notes in Vallotti are too hard to find. Hah! What a ridiculous assertion, you say. You tune it and then you play. Well, that may be true for keyboard players, who decide on a temperament that suits the music, spend a little time setting the temperament on the keyboard, then forget about it. It is in ensemble situations that I have a problem with Vallotti. From key to key, accidental to accidental, there are six different sizes of semitone in Vallotti and Young. Professionals who get used to performing with the same temperament all the time come to grips with this and eventually learn where to find the notes, but for student performers, it’s a frustrating situation, frequently aggravated by someone telling them how important it is to be performing in a “Baroque” temperament. It’s not just Vallotti and Young that share this problem, of course; any irregular temperament will have similar difficulties. But again, it’s Vallotti as the universal solution, chosen by harpsichordists who use it all the time for their solo playing, know how to tune it (and may not want to learn a new temperament), and unwittingly force the unsuspecting members of the ensemble–from sonata soloist to Baroque orchestra–to play it their way. It’s a clear case of the blind leading the blind. Keyboard players don’t see the problems of non–keyboard instruments performing in Vallotti, and the other instrumentalists and vocalists don’t know what the problem is–they just know it’s hard to be in tune.

Lastly, as heretical as it may sound, I would like to suggest that Vallotti and Young are not the best choices for Baroque music for musical reasons. Although recognized as an asset, “circulation” can be a liability as well. The liability of ET, as we have seen, is M3rds that are uniformly bad. In Vallotti and Young, there are three M3rds that are quite good, two that are mediocre, two that are as bad as ET, and five supposedly usable M3rds that are actually worse than ET! In the home key of C for Vallotti and G for Young, there are few problems, but venture very far from those centers and the consonances, though usable, are not very satisfying.

Is the flexibility of Vallotti and Young too much of a compromise for Baroque music? Is there some other historical temperament that, especially given a little more circumspection in the choice of keys for a given concert program, would produce a better result and be easier for an ensemble?

Footnotes
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1. Circulating Temperament – One that can be used without adjustment in the complete circle of keys. Sometimes called a “well” temperament
2. Irregular Temperament – One in which the 5ths are of different sizes (e.g. some tempered, some pure)
3. Pure M3rd – interval with the harmonic ratio 5:4, or 386.31 cents, often rounded to 386c