I think that equal temperament is just one more temperament. The single purpose of ANY temperament is to distribute in some musically satisfying way the "leftovers" which occur when beatless, purely harmonic intervals are approximated by dividing an octave into twelve pieces.This is obscured by any categorizing of temperaments, however logical, which places equal temperament out on a separate branch of the family tree. Choosing up sides (the concept of historical "versus" equal) robs us tuners of valuable resources, no matter how many tuning styles one elects to be proficient in. All music relies in some way, usually many ways, on the balance between tension and release. In medieval times, music which was pure melody still had polarity between the "dominant" tone and the "final" or home tone, and, because of the sensitivity of the times to melody, a leap as large as a fourth could practically create ecstasy! Some cultures, even today, are very sensitive to many microtones we have long forgotten. Since we're talking about tuning, I'll skip the other forms of tension/release like meter, form, and so forth. In "harmonic" music, from the fourteenth century or so to the present, there have been increasingly subtle and complex forms of harmonic tension/release, but it is still typical to go from a point of rest, stasis, or consonance to activity and dissonance and back again. For thousands of years, there has been an undeniable attractiveness to a "just" interval, and typically, the lower in the harmonic series it is, the more consonant it is heard as. Even in the 20th century, in movable-pitch instruments like strings and voice there is a clear predilection toward just intonation in harmonic structures, particularly at points of resolution. We need only to listen to the last chord of a piece sung by any good choir. Perhaps partly because of the use of fixed-pitch keyboard instruments, in which constant re-adjustment to just intonation is impossible, at a time when harmonic excursions tended to be fairly simple, temperaments came into use in which more consonance was assigned to more frequently-used keys. Later the difference between the sweeter keys and the sourer ones was exploited musically as a form of tension, and as a palette of "colors." However, it was a separate issue, based on the harmonic language of each era. Chopin would certainly sound different on a piano which could magically adjust each chord to just intonation, just as he sounds different in ET; BUT the harmonic tension, while not as pungent, would remain for those who developed a sensitivity to harmonic excursions to key centers more distantly-related, in the terms of common-practice harmony. There is obvious cross-pollination between the music and the temperaments, but a chicken-and-egg argument over which comes first misses the point. Chopin and Beethoven certainly exploited the differences produced by the temperaments, but how a Magic Adjusting Piano would have influenced their music is unknown. All temperaments, ET included, favor one sound at the expense of another. _Discussions_ over which one might be suitable for a given situation are hugely profitable, and expand the musical awareness of ourselves and our clients. _Arguments_ over which one is "right" are, at best, counterproductive. Anyway, once we leave just intonation, ET is just the end-point (not the apex) of a continuum from extreme favoring of certain keys in distribution of the comma, to a convenient neutrality in which each key shares equally in as small a comma-load as possible. One more tool in the bag. Each temperament has its place, but just as no two performers interpret the notes the same way, that place varies for each of us, and the discussion, thank goodness, can never be settled. Bob Davis, RPT Stockton, CA
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