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Hi there,

My Kawai has different temperaments, among others Meantone, Werckmeister, Kirnberger.

Want to know which temperament was usual in the Mozart period. Did some research on internet, but did'nt find the answer..who knows?

Best regards,
Johan B

Even though the real answer is nobody really knows, between the three you mention, I'd say more chances with Werckmeister III or some variation of it.

All those temperaments, and more, were being used in Mozart's time. Different musicians would tune their instruments in different ways, adapting the tuning to the tonalities of the pieces they were about to play if necessary. The "Well" temperaments such as Kirnberger and Werckmeister were designed to work in all possible keys, although some keys sound notably "gritty" while others are much nearer to pure intervals. The meantone temperaments were even less regular than the "Well" temperaments, with some keys being simply unusable.

According to this article, Mozart was taught to use a meantone tuning by his father. I can believe that Mozart went on using some version of meantone tuning: I don't think he wrote any keyboard pieces in keys with more than three flats or three sharps. There's a discussion here on the forums about the possible temperaments Mozart might have used.

These days Werckmeister seems to be a favourite with harpsichordists or fortepianists for playing 18th century music.

It's funny to see this topic come up when we were just having a discussion about the scarcity of historical keyboard sounds on digital pianos. Why do so many digital pianos have several historical temperaments, but so few have usable historical keyboard sounds to go with them?

I suspect the historical pianos would sound little different to our own. Some good, some not so. Tonal wise, with lack of sophistication, they might have sounded woody compared to the more refined stuff available now. But nothing like what is portrayed on Pianoteq for example.

My own Broadwood was very mellow, but lacking in decent sounding top notes. A posher (ornate) version from the same period, 1856,(this appeared in a salesroom shortly after I bought my own) had no such defect!

There's no need to simply suspect: there are restored historical pianos and many carefully-constructed copies that can give an idea of the spectrum of what was available. I have played on both originals and copies from the 18th century: certainly there are huge differences between different instruments, but they all sound very different from our present-day pianos.

I wouldn't say these instruments are less sophisticated or refined than modern ones: they just have different qualities. A fortepiano from the late 18th century will have a much smaller dynamic range than a modern piano, but the tone will be purer, with less inharmonicity.

The Pianoteq copies are certainly not perfect, but they have been carefully constructed using actual historical instruments as models. I haven't played the particular instruments that were used, so I cannot say exactly how close they are, but I can testify that the sounds are quite close to those of instruments I have played. The 1795 Dohnal, for instance, sounds very much like a copy of a 1787 Anton Walter that I have often used for playing continuo.

There were a lot of temperaments in use in that period. My understanding is that Equal Temperament may have been known earlier but that we didn't have the measuring equipment to be able to tune it accurately until the twentieth century.

I know tuners count beats but when it comes to fractions they must all have their own unique versions.

I use the Bach-Lehman 1722 temperament. I can't really tell one temperament from another on a back-to back test but every once in a while Bach-Lehman gives me glorious harmonies that aren't audible in any other tuning. It's been the default on my Kawai since early last year.

Yes - a friend of mine tuned his harpsichord in a quarter-tone meantone or something like that for when we played fiddle-harpsichord duets. Oh my. Old Scottish and Irish music was glorious, as you say.

Cathy