Pianotech Digest, Vol 1296, Issue 141

[Israel Stein]

>On Mon, 18 Feb 2008 Ed Sutton wrote:

 >The Prinz temperament is very easy to tune by ear if you start with C:

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>Tuning like this wouild have been a very common skill for keyboard players 
>in the 18th century.

>Again, if you tune the historic temperaments from C, you'll be amazed how 
>easy they are to tune....which is, of course, exactly why they were 
>invented.

>Ed Sutton

Sorry, Ed, but I am going to have to take issue with this last statement. Quarter comma circulating Baroque temperaments (which is what we are talking about here) weren't invented because they were "easy to tune". They were invented because they met certain musical needs - i.e., to enable the use of all keys (i.e. eliminate the "wolf" interval) and to impart a specific individual "color" to each key. In any one of them, you temper 4 of the fifths to your taste and then tune the rest pure. Later on, when 1/6th comma temperaments emerge - such as Valotti or Young,  the consideration is not "ease of tuning" (they are more difficult than 1/4-comma temperaments) but a "gentler" tempering of the tempered fifths. 

Musicians tuned their own instruments - whether they were violins, harps, harpsichords or pianos. It came with the territory. Temperaments developed from easier to more difficult to tune over the years... The professional tuner became necessary when pianos (not temperaments) became too difficult for the average musician to tune - they simply weren't willing to spend the time and effort the learn a tuning technique  that was required by high-tension strings and high-torque tuning pins. With the older pianos that was not necessary. 

Israel Stein