{"id":1915,"date":"2016-07-07T15:12:55","date_gmt":"2016-07-07T15:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/casfaculty.case.edu\/ross-duffin\/?page_id=1915"},"modified":"2017-02-23T19:02:50","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T19:02:50","slug":"why-i-hate-vallotti-or-is-it-young-3-1","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/casfaculty.case.edu\/ross-duffin\/why-i-hate-vallotti-or-is-it-young-3-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I hate Vallotti (or is it Young?) 3.1"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Why I hate Vallotti – cont.<\/b><\/p>\n

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\u00a0happened to travel to Padua and ask him about it after that might have used it, but it wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s temperament weren\u2019t so universally used today, perhaps I wouldn\u2019t 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\u2013existent historical evidence, but they work so well that hardly anyone one wants to “rock the boat.” It\u2019s time to question the historical position of Vallotti for Baroque music and, if it\u2019s weak, then to explore some of the alternative circulating temperaments<\/span><\/a> that were known earlier in the 18th century, like those of Johann Georg Neidhardt.<\/p>\n

My second complaint about Vallotti\u2013and Young, by extension\u2013comes 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\u2019s a frustrating situation, frequently aggravated by someone telling them how important it is to be performing in a “Baroque” temperament. It\u2019s not just Vallotti and Young that share this problem, of course; any irregular<\/span><\/a> temperament will have similar difficulties. But again, it\u2019s 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\u2013from sonata soloist to Baroque orchestra\u2013to play it their way. It\u2019s a clear case of the blind leading the blind. Keyboard players don\u2019t see the problems of non\u2013keyboard instruments performing in Vallotti, and the other instrumentalists and vocalists don\u2019t know what the problem is\u2013they just know it\u2019s hard to be in tune.<\/p>\n

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Vallotti Minor 2nd<\/p>\n

Click numbers on petals to hear audio.<\/p>\n