Equal Temperament

[John Delacour]

At 9:23 PM -0500 21/2/02, Charles Neuman wrote:

>...And popular culture just takes it for granted that ET has been
>around for more than a century and that the difference between WT and ET
>is insignificant. But I'd like to hear from someone who has some more
>evidence on the subject.
>
>...But I wouldn't be surprised if there's evidence that showed that 
>people attempted to tune in ET over a century ago and did it to the 
>best of their abilities for their time period, even if it wouldn't 
>pass the RPT exams. So they call it ET, but today we might not. That 
>might be some of the source of the controversy.

Writing in 1869 for a popular readership, Edgar Brinsmead says 
"...hence the necessity of _tempering_ the fourths and fifths which 
has given the new scale the name of equal temperament".  He then goes 
on for a page or so describing exactly how the scale is laid though 
without going into the actual number of beats involved, which would 
have been beyond the scope of his little book.

By "new" he means since 1841-46, when equal temperament was 
commercially established in England and when Broadwood and the other 
main makers would have started regularly using it.  The evidence is 
well documented by Alexander Ellis, the translator (1885) of 
Helmholtz's Sensations of Tone (Dover Books).  Equal temperament was 
by this time well established in Germany.  Helmholtz himself writes 
(1862) "Of our great composers, Mozart and Beethoven were yet at the 
beginning of the reign of equal temperament".

According to Ellis: "In 1812 Dr Crotch (Elements of Musical 
Composition, pp 134-5) gives the proper figures for equal 
temperament....but says nothing to recommend it.  Yet in 1840 Dr. 
Crotch had his own chamber organ tuned in equal temperament."

 From what I read, I gather that England was some way behind Germany, 
and probably France, in the matter of equal temperament and it seems 
likely that the knowledge was available to tune accurately in ET very 
early in 19th century.  Scheibler, the inventor of the tonometer that 
allowed perfect tuning in ET, died in 1837.

It seems to me highly unlikely that Chopin would have been happy 
playing his compositions on a piano that was not equally tempered and 
I for one would not want to hear them.  I'm not interested in joining 
this debate, but the very detailed facts and figures are there for 
anyone to read.

As to the relative skills of tuners now and 150 years ago, I'd guess 
the avant-garde then were as good as the best now.  I can't think of 
a single reason why they should not have been.

JD