Equal Temperament, history of, judgement of

[John Delacour]

At 4:02 PM -0500 24/2/02, Billbrpt@AOL.COM wrote:

>Writers in the last 24 hours on both sides of this issue have made 
>my case often better than I could.  Jorgensen's book clearly 
>explains that the mild forms of WT used in the Victorian age were 
>thought of and considered to be ET.

>From what I've read here recently of what Jorgensen says, I think 
I'll stick with authors that base their writings on historical fact 
rather than opinion and conjecture.

>(I did not keep Helmholtz' book in my library, I sold it at the end 
>of the term, nearly 30 years ago).
>
>And yes, after reading Helmholtz' book, I thought of the crude WT I 
>was doing as the ET which Helmholtz claimed to be the solution 
>forevermore to the problem of temperament.

Bill, it's a great pity you didn't keep the book because you would 
now be able to read that Helmholtz was in fact strongly averse to 
equal temperament and gets quite uncharacteristically angry with 
musicians who insist on the merits of tempered intonation.

He writes:

"I think that no doubt can remain, if ever any doubt existed, 
<italic>that the intervals which have been theoretically determined 
in the preceding pages, and there called natural, are really natural 
for uncorrupted ears; that moreover the deviations of tempered 
intonation are really perceptible and unpleasant to uncorrupted 
ears...</italic>"

and, referring to equal temperament:

"...the pianoforte is doubtless a very useful instrument for making 
the acquaintance of musical literature, or for domestic amusement or 
for accompanying singers.  But for artistic purposes its importance 
is not such as to require its mechanism to be made the basis of the 
whole system of music."

...and a lot more besides in various places.  Helmholtz was a fervent 
advocate of JUST intonation and would probably commend your work 
highly as an attempt to relieve the unpleasantness of equal 
temperament which he felt most keenly.

JD