At 08:22 PM 4/24/2002 -0700, you wrote: >OOps!!!! > >Another "I clicked on send too soon" experience. I even got the "OFF LIST" >into the subject line, but >I didn't check the address. > >Apologies > >Paul Bailey <grin> "Errmail", that's called. An explanation of my personal attitude toward non-equal temperaments, and the reason for it --- I started as a string player, made my living at it for awhile. My intonation was good, and of course I had worked hard on it for years and years. One gets a taste for it. In fact, one gets downright attached to it. When it's good, it feels very good and right, and when it is bad it feels horrid. All but a very few string players have more or less bad intonation. Really true intonation is one of the things which is achieved last in the learning process. Now, cello intonation is melodic, not harmonic, and when I first was studying tuning I couldn't even hear the beats in a third (for a day or so ...) I just heard that it was in tune. Nonetheless, when I first heard historical temperaments (years later), I discovered that during the cello-studying years I had developed a very strong taste for what size intervals should be. The mild Well temperaments and the near-equal temperaments were easily within my tolerance zone; mean-tone was DECIDEDLY not. Listening to a very strong-flavored temperament of Paul's at Diane Hofstetter's, I could hear that an occasional chord or interval were very sweet --- but any enjoyment of that was ruined by the great feeling of "bad intonation" from other ones. I can understand that people who have not developed their sense of interval size or intonation as keenly (especially the general public) could get a great deal from non-equal temperaments. To me, they just sound out of tune. So, I leave them for those who are set up to enjoy them. Susan
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