I came across this quote in a lively discussion on “The Session” forum:
“It has been claimed that the Irish scales differ from modern scales not only in the distribution of the tones and semitones, but also in the very important matter of intonation; that is to say that the intervals between the notes in the Irish scales and in the modern scales are not identical; so that for example the Irish scale of ‘do’ does not coincide with the natural scale of ‘do’, nor with the tempered scale as we have it on the piano.”
“It is a fact also that the old melodies lose much of their savour when rendered with any but the traditional intonation.”
“It is to be regretted, but it is inevitable that we should hear so much about traditional Irish music from those who are not competent to discuss it. On the one hand we have musicians who deny the element of traditional intonation. As they refuse to study the matter in the only way in which it can be studied, i.e. by listening to the best traditional singers and violin-players, their opinion can have no weight. On the other hand we have the extremists who regard every native speaker of Irish as a true exponent of traditional singing. Sometimes he is only an exponent of singing out of tune.”
All of the above quotes are taken from the Foreword to Vol 1 of the Roche Collection, written by Cathaoir O’Braonain, 1909.
This seems to suggest that traditionally Irish music used neither ET nor more importantly for pipers JI which don’t feel right but maybe it is.
So much effort has been spent throughout Music history, from the Greeks on, as to WHICH notes are WHERE and in WHAT RATIO. (ever play with a monochord??)
Each epoch has developed its own answers: ET, JI, Meantone, 1/2 tone di-tonic comma, etc, etc, etc…
Even distinct regions, (Brittany, Hungary for ex., )all have their local inflections of temperament, all claiming authenticity.
The fact is that since no recordings are available from before the middle of the 19th c, we’ll really never know in what temperament the most aincent of all Folk-art melodies (not just ITM) were performed prior to that.
In fact the only concrete evidence we may have of temperaments in ages past are slowly rotting pipe organs in Churches tucked away in corners of Europe, and the occasional still-playable cornett, fife, or recorder.
AS was pointed out at the session.org: listen to the great fiddleplayers: Crehan, Kelly (both John and Patrick), Casey, Rochford, Canny, Fahey, Galvin, Murphy, O Keeffe etc and to good Sean Nos singers and you have your answer. If you really listen.
And there are a lot of subtleties to be heard. Just sounding good with the drones is the tip of the iceberg in imho. There are at least three sonorous tunings of C nat that give very different harmonic and melodic results.
The academic stuff about the various tuning systems is very much related to the challenge of tuning in multiple keys. For ITM that’s less of an issue, but there a lot of ways to color a note by varying intonation while being in tune with the drones or a reg chord (assuming there’s no unison)
Someone at thesession.org said that all these fiddleplayers had their own intonation oddities they used all the time but in fact you hear intonations vary appropriate to the tune, notably in Bobby Casey’s playing (if you take recording made when he was in his prime) or if you are looking for pipers, Seamus Ennis’ playing where you may find him use three different Cs in the one tune, appropriate to the circumstances. It is an issue that goes well beyond how your instrument is tuned but it’s an interesting one and looking into it you can only come to the conclusion that well played Irish music uses intonations that are not of the equal tempered scale (nor do these scales stick to the just intoned scale by the way, that would be too easy to say, people looking for the one rule or guideline will not find one beyond the advice to listen and learn to understand the musical language)
yes youre quite right… I may be mistaken about the exact numbers, but there are three different ratios the ear will percieve as an octave, then 9 for the fifth, 27 for a fourth, so on & so on…by the time you sound a 6/4 chord, or a tritone, the number of possible ‘correct’ sounding tunings are enormous.