On Jan 13, 2009, at 10:57 AM, reggaepass at aol.com wrote: > FROM WHAT I UNDERSTAND ABOUT HOW MUCH DEVIATION A TEMPERAMENT CAN > HAVE AND STILL PASS THE PTG TUNING TEST, ISN'T IT POSSIBLE THAT MANY > PEOPLE TODAY WHOSE AIM IT IS TO TUNE EQUAL TEMPERAMENT ARE ACTUALLY > PRODUCING SOMETHING CLOSER TO THE REALM OF QUASI-EQUAL? Yep. Of course, it depends where you draw a line. Myself, I prefer a much wider definition of ET, one which would include "quasi-equal" and "Victorian." I think that is more in keeping with what people actually hear. > > It is certainly true that the historical data are mixed. For many > years, there was an acceptance of the false notion that ET was > generally practiced from the time of Bach. In the zeal to correct > this historical error, a contrary opinion has been promoted: that ET > didn't exist, or at least that WT was prevalent, to the end of the > 19th and beginning of the 20th century. > > OK, SO IN MY NAIVETE I DRANK JORGENSEN'S KOOL-AID. My positions/opinions are possibly somewhere around mainstream in music scholarship circles, meaning there are more or less equal numbers of passionate believers on either side of me, as well as vast numbers who are agnostic. In those piano tuning circles in which historical and other non-ET temperaments are hot topics, Jorgensen's views tend to prevail, to be accepted as gospel, to the best of my knowledge. How well his views are understood is another matter. Perhaps I should have put it differently: "A popular view of what Jorgensen wrote" in place of "Jorgensen's views." I have the utmost respect for Jorgensen's work. I disagree in some areas of interpretation, but he is the one who did much of the work of collecting and making available the materials on which we can base an interpretation. His own interpretations tended to be less absolute than those of many of his purported followers. He was very much a lone voice in the wilderness initially, so his writings have a tone that may have erred on the side of advocacy. He was really swimming against a strong current, and was vilified for his efforts. I remember well a heated exchange of letters in the Journal between him and Virgil Smith in the early 80s. IOW, I wouldn't call it Jorgensen's Kool-ade. It was simply passionate advocacy for material that had been ignored, collecting the evidence and presenting it, making it clear that the "all ET since Bach" position was patently a false one. In any case, my major point in going to this kind of trouble writing on this topic is to point out that there are very few cut and dried "facts." It is mostly conjecture, and the evidence, such as it is, is contradictory, and subject to many possible interpretations. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090113/10274059/attachment.html>
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