Bach seal (was Re: Lehman/Bach Temperament)

[Brad Lehman]

Let's be perfectly clear: all of the numbers given below have absolutely 
nothing to do with my work.  Those are just a new temperament made up in 
2006 by Charles Francis, assigning a bunch of ratios based on Bach's 
seal (and Francis's out-Kellnering of Kellner's own esotericism...which 
to me seems arbitrary and meaningless).

I don't believe that Bach's seal encodes any manner of temperament, or 
has anything in particular to do with music.  I believe it's just a 
nicely-designed seal with the initials "JSB" in it, plus their mirror 
image, plus a crown on top to make it fancier.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/BachSeal.gif

Some of my comments about that Bach seal are on my FAQ page #3 here:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/larips/faq3.html

"What about Kellner's claim to have found important 5s and 7s in Bach's 
seal, indicating five tempered 5ths and seven pure 5ths? What of it? One 
could just as easily claim that there are numbers 1, 3, 3, 5 in the 
crown of it, and that they indicate the one wide 5th (A#-F), the three 
1/12 PC 5ths (C#-G#-D#-A#), the three pure 5ths (E-B-F#-C#), and the 
five 1/6 PC 5ths (F-C-G-D-A-E) of my proposed temperament here. And it's 
from the same year--1722--as the WTC title page! Wowee!"

"But esoteric games of this sort are not sufficient evidence of 
anything, on their own because the interpretation is so arbitrary, 
against other equally arbitrary readings of the same monogram. Plenty 
has been made of the various 14s hidden in this same design. What do 
they prove? What do they disprove against other readings?"

"Bach's strongest medium of expression, as an expert musician, was 
musical sound; I believe we should judge evidence and interpretations by 
the way Bach's sound is handled. Real sound at good instruments. Not 
esoteric and arbitrary Quatsch!"


Bradley Lehman
http://www.larips.com


===========

A440A at aol.com wrote:
> Jon writes: 
>  
>>> Where doe someone find these offsets?<< 
> 
> I received the following, some time ago, from our West Coast tempering maven, 
> who, I believe, got them from the "Tuning" list.  I have used this tuning for 
> some of my hard core clients and they feel like it opens up another world of 
> music for their pre-1800 repertoire.  Others have enjoyed it on their much 
> less advanced repertoire,(you know, where they never get past three accidentals!) 
>  
>> From: Paul Bailey 
>  
>>> Subject: Tuning Interpretation of Bach's '1722 Seal' as Beats Per 
>>> Second
>>>
>>> (from TUNING list)
>   From: "J. Charles Francis" <Francis at datacomm.ch>
>>> Subject: Tuning Interpretation of Bach's '1722 Seal' as Beats Per Second
>  
>>> A short article (PDF) on this topic is available in tuning_files2:
>   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tuning_files2/files/Charles/Bach_Seal.pdf
>  
>>> For non-members, you can download at the following link:
>>>
>>> http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/Bach_Seal.pdf
>  
>>> Kind regards
>>> Charles
>  
>  
>>>  offsets  corrected for A=0.0
>>> C    8.128
>>> B    -2.582
>>> A#   5.959
>>> A    0.0
>>> G#   2.049
>>> G    5.431
>>> F#   -1.861
>>> F    7.914
>>> E    -0.822
>>> D#   4.004
>>> D    4.278
>>> C#   0.0942
>>>
> 
> Ed Foote RPT 
> http://www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/index.html
> www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_tempered_piano.html
>  
> 
> 
>