[CAUT] well tempered / Which Bach ?

[Fred Sturm]

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