Toward a tuning strategy for large Baroque ensembles
so we were rehearsing "Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft" (BWV 50) in Boston this week. This is a single-movement cantata which is probably not by Bach but is nonetheless spectacular, with chorus, strings, three oboes, three trumpets, and timps all blazing away in a stentorian fugue punctuated with fanfare-like outbursts. It starts out in D major but doesn't stay there long, migrating at various times to E major, F# minor and major, B major and major, and C# major. The weather is changing every day, and as one might expect the tuning got a little suspect, especially in those remote keys. We worked on some of the most offending passages with varying degrees of success; and one point somebody asked about the temperament and somebody else said "it's Vallotti" as though that solved everything. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed to sound even worse after that. [Read more...]