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From: ckk@cmu-cs-g.ARPA (Chris Koenigsberg)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Bach's temper
Message-ID: <291@cmu-cs-g.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 14-Jul-85 13:27:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-g.291
Posted: Sun Jul 14 13:27:46 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jul-85 03:11:03 EDT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 26

J.S. Bach did NOT use equal temperament, according to most eminent
musicologists today. He used its predecessor, known as "1/6th
comma meantone temperament" which was still an improvement over the unequal
tunings used on earlier keyboards. The whole point of his
"Well tempered Klavier" was NOT that every key was equally in tune.
If you study the pieces, you'll notice that the ones in keys with
few sharps and flats go through the most radical modulations,
while the pieces in farout keys stay pretty close to the major
and minor arpeggios. This is because those farout keys sounded
"out of tune" in the temperament he was using, and his genius
was to exploit the particualr in- and out-of-tunedness particular
to each individual key.

J.S.Bach's irreplaceable contribution to Western music was his
de facto establishment of the rules of "common practice" harmony,
i.e. no parallel fifths, no voice crossings, etc., that are still
taught today in harmony classes.

Chris Koenigsberg
ckk@cmu-cs-g.ARPA
{harvard,seismo,topaz,ucbvax}!cmu-cs-g!ckk
(412)578-8526 office, (412)362-6422 home
Center for Design of Educational Computing
Carnegie-Mellon U.
Pgh, Pa. 15213