(Sorry for the crossposting, but this seems to be a two-list-thread.)

I'd like to take the oppurtunity to once again point out Bradley Lehman's 
Bach-tuning, 
which can be studied at http://www.larips.com
According to his argumentation, equal could well have meant to be 
_equal-sounding_ 
in several instances. I quote from his FAQ:

"My thesis is that JS Bach knew very well about equal temperament (in the 1720s 
and 
earlier), and rejected its rise in practice by other experts, because he had 
something 
better-sounding already in hand. This was a major point in compiling the WTC as 
demonstration. His "equal-ish" temperament has the same complete flexibility 
through 
all keys, all equally usable, but with a healthy and interesting variety of 
characters also. 
It makes the jobs of the other players and singers easier and more natural, in 
the 
tensions and relaxations it reveals in the music. Interpretation becomes an 
instinctive 
reaction to the sound that is already happening: not a fight against equal 
temperament's sameness to put the phrasing across the footlights."

I read somewhere that ET or E-sounding-T became an important issue when 
professional wind players started to visit european courts around 1700 with 
differently 
pitched instruments depending on where they came from. Not surprisingly 
Neidhard 
advocates ET only for courts, this enables chromatic transposition to suite the 
guest 
artist. String players could adjust easily to the local pitch and meantone 
variety, and 
AFAIK choir and chamber pitch were mostly a whole tone apart which also 
minimizes 
transposing problems in a meantone temperament. So to me the rise of ET seems 
to 
be a practical issue rather than an aesthetical one.
It's a pity that unequal but circular temperaments like Lehman's aren't 
possible on 
fretted instruments.

Regards,

Stephan


Am 25 Mar 2006 um 12:37 hat Daniel F Heiman geschrieben:

> 
> On Sat, 25 Mar 2006 11:52:58 -0500 "Roman Turovsky"
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> <snip>
> > Howard wrote:
> > >> Equal
> > >> temperament pretty much destroys this expressive effect.   Most
> > >> baroque music is in one of the simpler keys (i.e. few sharps or
> flats
> > You forgot the modifier EARLY. In the later baroque where the 
> > expression is
> > based on modulation the ET is essential.
> > RT
> > 
> 
> Equal temperament is NOT essential for music from any part of the
> baroque era.  Some theorists, composers and performers were advocates
> of it, and others were not.  For example, Johann Sebastian Bach was
> not a fan of equal temperament.  He did write a set of pieces entitled
> "Das wohltemperierte Klavier," which most commentators now believe
> requires a circulating meantone temperament rather than equal tempered
> tuning.
> 
> F. W. Marpurg provides twelve different unequally tempered tuning
> schemes for keyboard instruments in his Versuch (Breslau, 1776).  J.
> P. Kirnberger gives a meantone keyboard temperament in 1779 (die Kunst
> des reinen Satzes in der Musik, Berlin) which is repeated in the
> treatise of C. L. G. von Wiese (Dresden, 1793).  All of these are
> beyond the normally accepted terminus of the baroque period.  Murray
> Barbour states, "We are told that organs in England were still
> generally in meantone temperament until the middle of the nineteenth
> century." (p. 10)
> 
> Daniel Heiman
> --
> 
> To get on or off this list see list information at
> http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
> 




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