more on this temperament thing

[A440A@AOL.COM]

Ric writes: 
<<Your questions begs other questions.  What do you mean by "intonation in
Western music".... "

  What I mean is that since Pythagoras, the musical scale used in what we 
call "Western" music,( I am not talking about Roy Rogers here..) has been 
evolving.  For the 1500 years after Pythagoras, there were no more than 7 
notes to the keyboard octave.  This began changing around 1000 A.D., evolving 
to the 12 note 7/5 arrangement by 1365 (Halberstadt organ).  The use of 
additional keys, going to 19 notes per octave,etc, didn't gain widespread 
enough acceptance,(abeit Vincentino et al tried).  
   The evolution of the third during this time was from a non-usable 81/64 or 
worse discord found in Pythagorean tuning, to the Just 5/4 of Aaron's day, 
and musical composition reflects a shift in harmony's complexity that 
corresponds to the new resources.  The music of the meantone era depends on 
this Justness, and the lack of modulation, due to that 41 cent wolf, is a 
prime characteristic.  
   Werckmeister's ideas of the late 1600's tempered the wolf, opened the 
door, and provided a musical scale that exhibited the "character of the 
keys", which fell into line with the previously popular,(at least with 
theorists) "doctrine of affections".  The lack of wolves allowed the sonata 
form to develop, ushering in the ever increasing complexity of harmony we see 
from Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, etc. 
    The adoption of the "scientific" approach to life that really took hold 
in the 18th century,(though it began with Galileo's dad and others some time 
before), pushed us toward a more scientific approach to the scale, and the 
tempering of that scale became more scientific and less dependant on variety 
of keys and their effects. 

>>or ---"with the realization" (of a certain temperament)
" that the historical evolution of intonation has come to an end.

     As mentioned above, the evolution of the scale has been a continuous 
journey toward equality, (Aristoxenes' ideas were using a scale of 10 equal 
semitones, and we can hardly call that ET for our purposes).  The changes 
between Werckmeister's temperament and today have all been changes of 
reducing the difference between keys,and today, with the near clinical ET we 
are capable of, we have nowhere else to go, other than multiple ET's, such as 
19TET, 53TET etc.  
   Bill Sethare's work with timbre influences on the scale has also 
demonstrated the efficacy of 10ET, he has a web site that you should be able 
to Google to and hear some of this latest stuff.  

>>How can we comprehend that the mere termpering of a piano has or can have
such a monumental effect on Western music? >>

   Could Beethevon have composed what he did on Aaron's temperament?  Could 
Stravinsky have composed what he did on Bach's?  Could Partch have composed 
what he did on a Young?   I say, no,  these composers relied on their current 
state of tempering for their intonational components.  
   Once again, now that we have reached what is for all intents and purposes 
perfect equality,  where do we go from here?  I think that the arrival at 12 
ET represents an intonational dead-end, a harmonic detour that Western music 
took after being blinded by science.  This is not to say that it has no 
value, the music of the 20th century depends on it, but it (ET) is just 
another brick in the wall, not a final, entropic end to the evolution of the 
musical scale. 
    To that end, I propose that the composers of tomorrow can be influenced 
by a wider array of intonation than what the composers of the 20th century 
labored with, and to provide that, the tuning will need to gain more 
complexity than 12 ET, which offers only one size interval.  
  How monumental is that to be?  Time will tell, but the composers of the 
last 100 years that rank with the greats that came before are few and far 
between.  I think tuners of the 21st century can make a difference in what 
the composers consider to be beautiful, and I want to be part of it.  Those 
that want to maintain a singular approach to tuning may be left out of this 
progress, I don't know.  
    Life requires growth, growth requires change, change requires alteration 
of the status quo.  Thus, the multi-temperament approach offers the tuner a 
life that is unavailable otherwise.  
   That is my  2 cents worth.  Now, I got 27 feet of piano to tune this a.m. 
so I gotta go. 
Regards, 
Ed Foote RPT