more on this temperament thing

[Richard Moody]

|
|    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.

Maybe, (but I doubt it), for keyboard compositions, but for the orchestras
they
didn't then nor do they now compose according to temperament.   Temperament
is a only a concern of the keyboard. (Say did Partch compose piano pieces?
If not what does Young have to do with his music?)
     Keyboard music is only one part of Western music.  The rest of Western
music could care less how the piano is tuned.  The concern of orchestras
and choruses is intonation.  Beethoven and Strivinsky heard the music in
their heads and wrote it out on music staves.  The piano needs to be
tempered to play this music, and the orchestra needs good intonation to
sound the way the composer intended.  Could Beethoven or STravinsky
composed if they had no piano?   They say Beethoven wrote music while on
walks in the woods.  It is hard to imagine that temperament had anything to
do with the Ninth Symphony or the Rites of Spring.


|    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.
| Regards,
| Ed Foote RPT

I am sorry you feel this way and it is perplexing because you alluded that
Beethoven and Stravinsky would have been inhibited by an HT. Yet ET renders
even their orchestrial music when played on the piano very enjoyable.
But if it is the scale you are blaming for the dead end, that is altogether
a different story.   Neither tempering nor intonation will give ideas of
what  new notes to add or old notes to do away with.   And without science
I don't think you will come up with any scale much less a better one, nor
can I imagine instruments built without science esp if you want out of a
harmonic detour. ---ric