Well-Temperaments

[Waldflote]

Hello Everyone!

I am nearing the point that I should begin considering temperament (Hopefully I have the organ playing sometime this summer). I am considering one of the well- (but not equal) temperaments such as Valotti or one of the Neidhardt variations. I plan to practice mostly hymns, liturgy, baroque, & classical periods. I want a bit of key-color without making any key unusable. My question at this point is: If I select one of the above, how will that affect my unified 2 2/3' Nasat? Will it sound better or worse, or will that depend on the key I am playing in?

Also, if my chimes are equal-tempered, will they sound intolerable with a well-tempered organ?

I would also entertain any feedback on these or other temperaments to consider.

Thanks!

[douçaine]

Hi Waldflote. Congratulations on the newly working organ!
If your Nasat is unified, you should not use any temperament besides equal, or slightly modified equal. In equal temperament, it is really hard to tell if the quint stops are unified, because the pure fifth is so closed to the tempered fifth (not true with tierces or pretty much anything else). In unequal temperaments, though, there will be some good fifths and some bad ones. The good ones will make your Nasat sound amazing, and the bad ones will make your Nasat sound out of tune. The goal of unequal temperament is to introduce dissonance between notes, but if there is dissonance within individual notes, something is going badly wrong. A single note should be the epitome of consonance, not a dissonance in and of itself.
If you are in the mood for retuning a lot (harpsichordists take note), you could choose to spend certain days not using the Nasat, and tune the organ to unequal temperaments for those days, and back for others. For the sort of music you play, I would recommend Valotti wholeheartedly (it will be absolutely magical), but never with the unified Nasat.
Chimes will have their own structural dissonances; it really wouldn't matter, unless you are using two extreme temperaments at once (like even versus quarter-comma meantone, which I once actually found at an actual church on an actual organ. It was the closest I ever came to killing a tuner).