Dear List, My friend, Skip Becker, who writes extensively about Historical Temperaments passed me this latest excerpt of his writing. He felt that all the writing I had done about the Reverse Well phenomenon warranted a footnote. Recently, a contributor to the List suggested that I often remark about how bad other people's tunings are but if you really read what I have said, you would know that what I have been talking about is the effects of unrecognized errors that come from the belief that only Equal Temperament is appropriate for tuning the modern piano. **************************************************************************** Hey Bill, Taking a closer look at the Temp War of 1806-1812. A little afraid I'm beating a dead horse, but what the hell. An excerpt: As this work has previously pointed out, the Temperament War did not include our forebears, the first professional tuners. They too embraced the term “equal temperament” wholeheartedly, despite the fact they practiced either a modified meantone or well temperament. For them, ET was the easiest theoretical temperament ever devised. According to the general understanding, all they had to do was circle the 5ths, and destroy the beats at the octave. The thirds could fall where they may, and any cause of complaints could be blamed on the necessity of equal temperament. And there were complaints, especially from knowledgable musicians. An indication of how well our forbears were doing comes from Jean Jousse (1760-1837).7 In 1832, long after the smoke from the temperament war had cleared, he wrote an important book for aspiring tuners. He notes of so-called ET: “... it cannot be obtained in a strict sense, as may be proved not only mathematically, but also by daily experience; therefore the best equally tempered instruments are still unequally tempered, and, what is worse, oftentimes in wrong places.”8 NOTES 7. Jousse was a Frenchman who fled the Revolution and settled in London. In 1832 he published a book “calculated to assist young students in tuning, correctly, the pianoforte.” The book thorough. It included an explanation of monochords, string acoustics, the harmonic series, ratios, commas, wolf intervals, beats plus the definition, history and necessity of temperament. It also contained advice on tuning hammer technique, mutes, test chords, repairs etc. Ibid, page 417 8. Jousse reports the phenomenon we call “Reverse Well Temperament.” Bill Bremmer, RPT has written extensively on the subject. ****************************************************************************** * Thanks a lot. I seem to recall having read Jousse's remarks somewhere. Many people think I am the one who coined the term, "Reverse Well" but I tell them that I did not. I'll be sure to remember now who did. Jousse's remarks reflect my own observations to a tee. The more that people believe only in ET, the more that Reverse Well becomes an accepted substitute for it and the more the tuning profession says to itself, "Who cares about HT's? Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin
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