more on this temperament tangent

[A440A@AOL.COM]

Tom Sivak writes: 
<<Gregorian chant is a vocal form.  I think it unlikely that they would sing 
perfect fifths and find that their thirds were too wide.
I suppose that  temperament also led 13th century composers to write parallel 
seconds and  sevenths, a practice abandoned in the 14th century. << 

    A closer study of Gothic intonation will make very clear that what we 
would call huge dissonances were actually a feature of the music. the 
following may help  with understanding the logic of temperament as an 
influence on composition, (something that Mr. Sivak seems hell-bent on 
denying).  

- From Margo Schulter, -----------------------------
2. The late Gothic (1300-1450)
------------------------------

The epoch of around 1325-1335 may herald two landmarks in the
development of the organ: the first known collection of idiomatic
keyboard music, the Robertsbridge Codex, and the advent of the "7+5"
keyboard, all 12 notes of this keyboard being called for by the music
of this collection. As Mark Lindley suggests, a 12-note Pythagorean
tuning of Eb-G# would nicely fit this music.  
     The Robertsbridge Codex, with proposed dates ranging from 1325 to
1365, includes both dance music and ornamented versions of vocal
motets; both types of compositions will remain common in later
keyboard sources.
       Lindley proposes that the keyboard practice of tuning sharps as
Pythagorean flats (G# as Ab; C# as Db; F# as Gb) -- starting maybe
around 1370 or 1380 in Florence, and common by the first decades of
the 15th century -- may have had an influence not only on keyboard
music, but on the vocal music of composers such as Ciconia and the
young Dufay.  In this tuning, thirds involving written sharps would be
realized as Pythagorean diminished fourths, known by modern theorists
as "schisma thirds" only a schisma (32805:32768) or ~1.95 cents from
pure 5-based ratios.

Lindley shows how, in collections such as the Buxheimer Organ Book,
prolonged noncadential sonorities with these almost-pure thirds, are
used as a "stock-in-trade." He suggests that the music of composers
such as the early Dufay would also fit a kind of vocal intonation
influenced by this kind of keyboard tuning.
    Around 1450, Mark Lindley infers a shift to meantone temperament in
part from the style of compositions by Conrad von Paumann with
successions of tertian sonorities which Lindley concludes are meant to
be "firmer" than they would in a Pythagorean tuning. Around this same
time, the vocal music of the later Dufay and Ockeghem similarly
features such textures, suggesting a trend toward a 5-limit ideal.
Here it might be best to say that the worlds of vocal and keyboard
music -- and their intonational ideals -- are not unrelated, and may
interact in various ways.
     Margo Schulter

Tom Sivak again: 
>>Orchestral music is played in just intonation.  Each player constantly 
tunes 
his instrument adjusting each note.  

   Hmm,  that is some trick. According to Howard Rosen,  horns and reeds are 
built to play in ET, so you have an entire orchestra adjusting their 
intonation on the fly, arriving together at Just intonation?   This beggars 
the imagination. ( at least, my beggarly imagination).  

Tom again: 
>>Temperament only exists on keyboard 
instruments.  Not in the minds of composers.  When a composer writes an 
orchestral piece, he thinks in just intonation.  << 

     I don't see how the writer can know what is in the minds of composers, 
at least to this degree.  I won't call this sort of statement arrogant or 
self-inflated,  simply specious.  

Much more to come, "my" pianists are looking at some of the posts and 
formulating some classical rebuttals. 
Regards, 
Ed Foote RPT