Cease Fire! Apologies to all

John Delacour JD@Pianomaker.co.uk
Sat, 23 Feb 2002 15:31:07 +0000


At 9:43 PM -0500 22/2/02, Billbrpt@AOL.COM wrote:

>I wouldn't at all be interested in any debate or discussion about 
>whether this 21 Century music should have been in ET.  I do what I 
>do because I believe in what I do and it works for me.  While I 
>appreciate the offering of the one person who came up with some 19th 
>Century evidence of use of ET, I was not at all convinced by it but 
>I did see from that writer what I have often recognized, the same 
>resistance to HT's that I have for ET.

I presume I am "that writer" and that writer in fact has no religious 
convictions about equal temperament or any other matter.  I am, 
however, interested in historical fact when it relates to scientific 
matters and has been demonstrated by measurement, and Alexander Ellis 
is most scientific and historical and impartial in his approach.  I 
am really surprised that you seem not to have read Helmholtz and the 
valuable supplementary material on temperament etc. that is supplied 
by Ellis in the notes and appendices that is the result of the most 
thorough and exact research.  Since I have only referred to about a 
hundredth part of his evidence and you are "not convinced", then 
perhaps you should spend a few dollars and read the whole of the 
evidence which you cannot fail to find convincing. [ISBN 
0-486-60753-4].  If I have, according to your imputation, a 
resistance to historic temperaments, then I must have a very strong 
resistance to equal temperament, since it has a longer documented 
history than any other.

JD



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