I don't think there is much of a possibility that everyone used Tosi's tuning.
I mean, they don't call it "ordinaire" for nothing, and Handel had 
his own temperament, his own Tuning fork, and so on.
dt

At 12:21 PM 9/2/2009, you wrote:
>Hi, all..
>
>I have been having fun reading Prof Duffin's "How ET Ruined Harmony"
>and wanted to ask about Baroque tunings wrt lutes, theorbos, et al.
>
>According to Prof D, most late Baroque (post 1650) and Classical tuning
>was done using the scheme written out by one Pier Francesco Tosi.  In
>this scheme he divides a tone into nine parts (commas) with an octave
>consists of 55 commas.  He thus differentiates between a "major semitone"
>(diatonic) at 5 commas and a "minor semitone" (chromatic) at 4 commas.
>In terms of our modern cents, the major semitone is around 109.1 cents=20
>and the minor at 87.3, for a noticeable difference of almost 22 cents.
>
>=46rom my reading, it seems that most continuo players tune to MT, whereas
>this tuning is closer to a "modified 6th-comma".  Is this the case?  Or
>does it vary based on circumstance?  For example, if playing in an=20
>orchestra with harpsichord, then one tunes to the harpsichord temperament.
>If one is solo with a singer, then one is free as to temperament.
>
>Any thoughts?
>
>--=20
>Best regards .. mark.
>
>
>
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