On 17 Jan 2007 at 23:22, John Howell wrote: > But I like your wording, Johannes. If we can agree that Joshua's > belief is indeed an hypothesis--an interesting hypothesis, a > suggestive hypothesis, even a brilliant hypothesis--then the next > stage in the scientific method follows. Test the hypothesis. Test it > in Bach's own church. Test it with the instruments he would have > used. Most importantly, test it with two boys and two university > students who are NOT operatically trained soloists!! Arguments and > opinions are easy; proof is not.
Such tests can't prove such a hypothesis, it can only show if the hypothesis is plausible. Musicological proof doesn't work the way science does because you can't actually establish a chain of causality because you don't know everything about the historical conditions involved. It's basically an example of "correlation does not prove causation." This is something Bradley Lehman of "Bach temperament" fame does not understand, for instance. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
