Re: "well-tempered"?

[r l reid <ro...>]

r l reid wrote:
> To: World music from a Jewish slant <jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org>
> 
> There's no reason to tune by fifths if you aren't trying to 
> play music such as European art music of the last 4 centuries.
> Just play in just intonation (with perfect ratios everywhere)
> and screw tuning in fifths.

Rereading this, it's got its logic wrong.  Please replace that idea
with the question "why is everyone so eager to generate octaves
by going up the circle of fifths?"

The circle of fifths is a fascinating phenomenon.  I think I see
the figurative habd of God in that little trick of the fifths
and the octaves - so close, and yet...

But there are other ways to generate a scale.  One good one
is to sing one right out and screw the math!

I also should have put my major refernce in here.  Shame on the Harvard
people for not reading the sources, Jorgensen is da man.

Jorgensen, Owen. Tuning the Historical Temperaments by Ear: A Manual
  of Eighty-nine Methods for Tuning Fifty-one Scales on the
  Harpsichord, Piano, and Other Keyboard Instruments. Marquette:
  Northern Michigan University Press, 1977.

r l reid        ro (at) rreid(dot)net


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