Temperament, is there a lutanist in the house?

[Susan Kline]

Re: equal temperament on fretted instruments ---

I haven't taken the time to look up lute tunings, but assuming they are 
like viols, they will have a variety of intervals between the strings?

I only have a (little) experience with a bass (not double bass) viol: it is 
tuned in fourths, with one major third thrown in to be perverse.

Assuming that the instrument is built accurately, so that a fret going 
straight across the neck will yield the same change in pitch on all 
strings, it is apparent that if one were to place the frets so that some 
strings would produce a noticeably non-equal temperament, each string would 
produce this  temperament in a different key from the others, and the 
strings spaced a third apart would produce quite vivid differences in 
temperament, in the same register, at that.

On the other hand, if one were to slant the fret, it would just mean that 
different strings would produce slightly inaccurate intervals, in a fairly 
chaotic fashion.

Hence, ET was probably not chosen for any theoretical devotion to ET, but 
as simply the only really practical alternative to a very messy anarchy of 
keys. Of course, if the frets were PRETTY NEAR to ET, the results would be 
just fine, as the AWFULLY CLOSE TO ET historical temperaments cause few 
adverse reactions from musicians. We all have considerable tolerance, 
though possibly the amount of tolerance varies from person to person; 
still, anything within our area of accommodation is acceptable enough that 
other questions such as timbre, etc., matter far more to us.

Actually, I think piano tuning moved toward ET for the same sort of 
accommodation: as music grew more chromatic, having all keys sort of all 
right became more valuable than having some really all right and others 
pretty awful.

No need for fundamentalism in this issue, IMHO. In the end, most practicing 
musicians are pragmatists.

Susan Kline