On Jan 12, 2009, at 3:45 PM, A440A at aol.com wrote: > Given that the best tuners at Broadwood's were calling a well > temperament > 'equal' in 1885 should be indicative that what we call well- > tempering today > was the norm before the turn of the century Hi Ed, I think you overstate the case. Let's not forget that there were three "Broadwood's Best" tuners whose work was measured by Ellis. #5 would have passed the PTG tuning exam (at least the temperament portion), as would one of the organ tunings he measured. #4 definitely was a "traditionalist" who had been taught in a WT mode. #3 seems a bit haywire - maybe he had a bad day <G>. Jorgensen's own conclusion, based on Ellis' measurements of four piano and three organ tuners, is that approximately half of the tunings done at that time had marked WT flavor. It's too small a sampling to draw firm conclusions. From the Ellis evidence plus tuning instructions of the time (like Tuner's Guide), Jorgensen extrapolates his notion of the Victorian Temperament, which has elements of WT. But we must remember that this is an extrapolation. And we must remember that there were examples of "very close approximation to ET" alongside WT examples. In all likelihood, the historical reality was a continuum between very close to ET, WT, and strong tendencies toward MT (1/6 comma and milder with alterations). I don't believe we can say that WT was "the norm" in an absolute sense at any time in history - it was competing with MT early on, and ET later. It was probably prevalent, in the sense of maybe more than half, from about 1730 to about 1830 (about being very approximate and rough, with all kinds of regional variants). Of course, it depends where you draw lines between the various systems, as they are all inter-related historically and in practice. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu
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