Isacoff's crusade.

[A440A@AOL.COM]

Greetings all, 
     Some of you by now have seen or read the Stuart Isacoff book 
"Temperament" .  The members of the "Tuning" list have been having a bit of 
spar over it, and the following post was sent in by J. Reinhard.  It is a 
sentence by sentence of a small portion of the book.  The quote is the first 
line, Johnny's response, marked with the ----,  follows each of Isacoff's 
sentences.   
   Just another look at the topic!
Regards, 
Ed Foote RPT 

>From the Tuning list:
BY JOHNNY REINHARD 

Isacoff Errors p. 216-217 with the text appearing as in the book, though 

sentence by sentence:


Equal temperament was not, however, the only tuning proposed to 

accommodate this new musical trend.

----The wrong implication as Werckmeister preceded ET on keyboards


Werckmeister developed an irregular temperament that came to be known as well 

temperament.

-----Werckmeister called it, and likely named it well temperament.


In Werckmeister's well-tempered tuning, certain keys were more in tune than 

others, but none were so out of tune as to be unplayable. 

-----No key were was more dissonant than Pythagorean, which was still heard 

in the culture.


Therefore, as a musical work moved from one key center to another, the shift 

would become blatant: the more far-reaching the displacement, the more 

grating the harmonies.

-----Not blatant at all, at least most people do not register any difference 

at all. And there is nothing grating other than a modern predisposition. 

Isacoff clearly has not heard the tuning.


This variegation a kind of perspective through audible shading was seized 

upon as a good thing by opponents of equal temperament, who saw in 

Werckmeister's system the advantage of a built-in musical syntax. 

-----This happens after Werckmeister and after Bach, not during the Baroque.


Changes in a piece s scales and harmonies were now overlaid with an added 

expressive element: a dramatic change in the quality of sound, depending on 

which tones the music revolved around at a given moment.

-----Baroque composers were careful not to overexpose the foreign keys or 

chords. Here Isacoff is at the tip of the iceberg regarding its potential 

expressivity.


(Of course, this change would only occur on keyboard instruments; strings and 

woodwinds were left to pursue their own musical grammars.)

-----Poppycock. Woodwinds always played, along with the strings of the 

Baroque, with the ever present keyboard. There is no separate grammar.


Advocates claimed for well temperament the bonus of giving each key its own 

character; but for many, subjecting a keyboard to gradations of in-and 

out-of-tuneness offered little in the way of musical value. 

-----This is ignorance of the value of key character. It shows up the value 

for melody ala the Rousseau bit since the ecstatic free nature of melody is 

better represented. And more in the way of musical value, not less.


Indeed, Werckmeister himself eventually became an advocate for equal 

temperament.

-----This is a lie. Werckmeister supported his chromatic tuning throughout 

his entire life, as I have previously exposed on this list.


The German critic and composer Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg who, at the request 

of the heirs of Bach, wrote a preface for a new edition of the master's Art 

of Fugue offered a terse critique of the well-tempered system in 1776: 

Diversity in the character of the keys, he wrote, will serve only to increase 

a diversity of bad sounds in the performance.

-----Marpurg was the director of the lottery and a bitter man. He is writing 

against Kirnberger (who was supported by CPE Bach and others).


There is controversy to this day over whether Bach preferred equal or well 

temperament. Some theorists contend that there is internal evidence in his 

music differences in the way he handled different keys to suggest he had well 

temperament in mind.

-----Yet there is little by Isacoff to represent the other side fairly.


(One modern scholar insists that he has broken the code of Bach's secret 

tuning by unraveling the images in the composer's personal seal, which 

contained seven points and five dashes. However, his secret solution 

conflicts with statements about temperament made by musicians in Bach's 

circle.)

-----Rather crude not to mention Herbert's name. Why not indicate what 

conflicts there were with statements in Bach's circle?


There is as much evidence on the other side: Bach's biographer Johann 

Nikolaus Forkel reported, for example, that Bach moved so subtly through the 

keys that listeners never noticed the change; this suggests equal 

temperament. 

-----And yet Forkel is one of the clearest that Bach is not equal 

temperament. None of this proves that Bach used anything different than 

Werckmeister. Only Isacoff is suggesting ET.


His obituary made a similar comment about the artful way in which he tuned 

his instruments

-----And tuning Werckmeister is MUCH faster than tuning 12-tET