[Harp-L] 17-note and 12-note scales

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"jimboogiebass" wrote:
<...   old organs had split black keys,, the front to sound the sharp,
<and the rear the flat (or do i have that backwards ? ) as they were
<indeed DIFFERENT notes----anyway that was that way for many years,,,
<and an organ still exists with 17 keys per octave,, (a different
<layout than I describe above  17 different keys, not split ones)

I just checked Google and was able to find one reference to a 17-note 
scale (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=477165):
******************
<the chromatic or diatonic scale, contrasted with the tonic or equal 
<tempered scale, is a musical scale consisting of 17 notes, where each 
<sharp and each flat differ by approximately 8hz. It is not well known, 
<as most musical instruments are constructed to use the equal tempered 
<scale for ease of use. My above definition is also very wrong. *grin 
<sheepishly* A chromatic scale is only segmented by 8hz between middle C 
<and its peers... it actually doubles for every octave upwards, and 
<halves for every octave downwards. I knew this, but wasn't particularly 
<smart when I wrote it, and forgot. ;-)
************************

This terminology is definitely not common, and several comments on the 
same web page as the one above note that this is so.  I'd like to see a 
picture of a keyboard designed to use this scale.  Even better if the 
reference describes how widely used such instruments were.

<would be interesting one day to count the pipes on some medieval
<european church organ... !!

The count of the pipes is not the same as the count of the keys, for 
several reasons.  Multiple keys can and do use a single pipe.  Various 
mechanical systems are used to switch from one set of pipes to another. 
 That's how those old organs produce different tones.

<...  and String Quartets to this day play a different note for say G#
<than Ab.....this all ties in with the equal temperament tuning vs
<Justified that we harp players dwell on at times,, both are systems
<worked out to try and compromise all the original tones of the
<western scale into 12 notes... --

I was a piano tuner early in my career.  A "scale" and a "temperament" 
are two different things.  A scale defines the notes available to the 
player; the temperament defines how those notes are tuned relative to 
each other and to their overtones.  Whether we're talking about a 
17-note scale or a 12-note scale, multiple temperaments are possible.

The point of the equal temperament isn't to try and condense 17 notes 
into 12; it's to produce a tuning in which all 12 keys sound equally 
good.  In early medieval  temperaments, intervals between notes were 
tuned in such a way that some keys (the ones closest to C) sounded 
fabulously, luminously beautiful, and others (the ones farthest from C) 
sounded absolutely awful.  That's why F# was known in medieval times as 
"the devil's key".  The equal temperament was designed to solve this 
problem, and it did so by compromising pure intervals to produce a set 
of 12 keys that all sounded pretty good.  That's why J.S. Bach wrote 
"The Well Tempered Clavier", which is a set of pieces in every major and 
minor key for keyboard  -- to show how good EVERY key sounded with an 
equal temperament.  Again: it had nothing to do with a change from 17 
notes to 12.  By Bach's time, keyboards were designed for an octave with 
12 notes.

<a lot of the trouble arose with the invention of the piano forte
<with its physical limitations... and indeed its the necessary
<simplification of the scale grated on many ears and caused the piano
<for some time to be regarded as a barbaric bastard of an
<instrument... eventually its power and relative ease of playing won
<over the world and the other instruments and music in general
<suffered fo it but did become easier to play and learn

The piano forte was regarded as a "barbaric bastard of an instrument?" I 
really need to see some scholarly references for that one.  The piano 
forte was a relatively late invention too, well after the harpsichord 
and organ, both of which had the same physical limitation in terms of 
keyboard design.

In any case, I'm sure of one thing: the vast majority of western 
musicians haven't been writing music for a 17-note scale for hundreds of 
years.  For that matter, most modern instruments couldn't easily play 
such music.

Thanks and regards, Richard Hunter
hunterharp.com