On Mar 25, 2008, at 9:03 AM, johnsond wrote: > I've often wondered about so much discussion over various formulas. > I find extremely hard to believe that any of the best 19th century > tuners used someone else's formula with the kind exact precision we > presume today. Amen to that! When you get into the historical literature (contemporary with the actual music, in renaissance and baroque periods and beyond), there certainly was a lot of nitpicking discussion, but one has to put it in context. The most precise thing they were using was a monochord, with measurements of length to produce the theoretical pitches - extremely imprecise. And nobody (no day to day professional performing musician) tuned an instrument using the monochord. The thing I like about Lehman's interpretation is that it seems "so Bach-like" in general attitude. A simple to learn, simple to execute pattern, with a certain amount of "sly elegance" to it. And Bach didn't have a lot of patience with the intellectuals and their arguments. Where I lose Lehman is in his second article, with all the "proof" having to do with things like size of EG# M3 and the like. I have my doubts that there was ever that degree of hyper-sensitivity to minute shadings on the part of composers. Not impossible, but unlikely IMO. I think the general shape is what mattered, when it mattered (which certainly isn't all the time). Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu
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