WTC

[Paul N. Bailey]

 If anybody is interested in some modern evidence about J.S. Bach's
intentions
regarding a temperament for the WTC, I recommend :

                        Bach's Keyboard Temperament
                
                Internal evidence from the WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER
                                   
                                    by

                                John Barnes

                        (pub. in  EARLY MUSIC, 1980)

Very briefly, this is a statistical analysis of the major thirds in the
preludes
of the WTC, with a temperament made to order by giving the least tempering
to the
third that is heard most frequently,and progressively more tempering to the
thirds that are heard less frequently, ie; if it sounds better, let's hear
it 
more!

One paragraph:
        "This article has tried to reveal the internal evidence which
suggests that the WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER  was written for a temperament
similar to Werckmeister III. It has also tried to show that a small
modification to Werckmeister III improves the agreement between temperament
and score. While this, of course, falls very far short of a proof that the
WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER
was written for the temperament given in Table 6, it consideably narrows
the practical search for temperaments suitable for performances of the
WTC.Futher
progress will probably come from playing and listening to the music on
authentic instruments suitably tuned. The first matter to debate is whether
the worst 
major thirds should be Pythagorean, with errors of 22 cents. They probably
should, since this value arises naturally in a tuning using perfect fifths,
and does not sound impossibly astringent in Bach's contexts. The secnod
uncertainty
concens a suitable value for the best major third or thirds. If the
temperament makes this too pure, more error will be left for distribution
among Major thirds such as E and G# which seem to need a tuning whisc is a
little better than Pythagorean. Theoretically there are an infinite number
of distinct temperaments to choose from. In practice, however, it will be
found that the values for the best and worst major thirds and the notes on
which they occur do not admit of much variation from those suggested here."



This article is rich with statistics, theory, historical references, and
practical tuning information.  I highly recommend it.


                                Paul Bailey