Threesology Research Journal
Let's Talk Peace
page 59

http://cenocracy.org




Note: the contents of this page as well as those which precede and follow, must be read as a continuation and/or overlap in order that the continuity about a relationship to/with the dichotomous arrangement of the idea that one could possibly talk seriously about peace from a different perspective as well as the typical dichotomous assignment of Artificial Intelligence (such as the usage of zeros and ones used in computer programming) ... will not be lost (such as war being frequently used to describe an absence of peace and vice-versa). However, if your mind is prone to being distracted by timed or untimed commercialization (such as that seen in various types of American-based television, radio, news media and magazine publishing... not to mention the average classroom which carries over into the everyday workplace), you may be unable to sustain prolonged exposures to divergent ideas about a singular topic without becoming confused, unless the information is provided in a very simplistic manner.



List of Pages in this Series

Let's Talk Peace page 1 Let's Talk Peace page 2 Let's Talk Peace page 3 Let's Talk Peace page 4 Let's Talk Peace page 5 Let's Talk Peace page 6 Let's Talk Peace page 7 Let's Talk Peace page 8
Let's Talk Peace page 9 Let's Talk Peace page 10 Let's Talk Peace page 11 Let's Talk Peace page 12 Let's Talk Peace page 13 Let's Talk Peace page 14 Let's Talk Peace page 15 Let's Talk Peace page 16
Let's Talk Peace page 17 Let's Talk Peace page 18 Let's Talk Peace page 19 Let's Talk Peace page 20 Let's Talk Peace page 21 Let's Talk Peace page 22 Let's Talk Peace page 23 Let's Talk Peace page 24
Let's Talk Peace page 25 Let's Talk Peace page 26 Let's Talk Peace page 27 Let's Talk Peace page 28 Let's Talk Peace page 29 Let's Talk Peace page 30 Let's Talk Peace page 31 Let's Talk Peace page 32
Let's Talk Peace page 33 Let's Talk Peace page 34 Let's Talk Peace page 35 Let's Talk Peace page 36 Let's Talk Peace page 37 Let's Talk Peace page 38 Let's Talk Peace page 39 Let's Talk Peace page 40
Let's Talk Peace page 41 Let's Talk Peace page 42 Let's Talk Peace page 43 Let's Talk Peace page 44 Let's Talk Peace page 45 Let's Talk Peace page 46 Let's Talk Peace page 47 Let's Talk Peace page 48
Let's Talk Peace page 49 Let's Talk Peace page 50 Let's Talk Peace page 51 Let's Talk Peace page 52 Let's Talk Peace page 53 Let's Talk Peace page 54 Let's Talk Peace page 55 Let's Talk Peace page 56
Let's Talk Peace page 57 Let's Talk Peace page 58 Let's Talk Peace page 59 Let's Talk Peace page 60 Let's Talk Peace page 61 Let's Talk Peace page 62 Let's Talk Peace page 63 Let's Talk Peace page 64

Let's face it, humanity has a lousy definition, accompanying practice, and analysis of peace.



Is the sound of peace to be associated with an absence of sounds associated with war such as exploding bombs, machine-gun fire, helicopters, jets, tank movement, missiles, etc., including the chatter (or noise) of journalistic reports about military actions or the chatter (or gossip) about war activities occurring amongst the populace and government officials? Do those who seek to hear the sound(s) of peace need to better distinguish them by insuring that they understand what isn't peace by advocating the prominence of war sounds? Why is it that some associate an absence of war-related sounds with peace? Whereas the absence of war sounds may tend to incline some people to associate peace with an absence of such sounds, they don't regularly associate the sounds of hunger, government distrust, or protest against abusive policing activities with peace.

Associations of events (or lack thereof) which are closely linked together in time and place are all too frequently used to determine cause and effect phenomena. Take for example the illustration by Denis Hilton given in a chapter entitled "Thinking about Causality: pragmatic, social and scientific rationality" in the book entitled "The Cognitive Basis of Science" edited by Peter Carruthers, Stephen Stich, and Michael Siegal; as begun on page 218 in reference to someone who associated headaches with a night of drinking alcohol at a bar, with two secondary considerations of the food which was consumed (in this case was "a lot" of mandarins) and that he talked a lot... but that he did not consider tertiary considerations such as loudness (music, singing, talking), cigarette smoke, or even personal physiological causes. The association of getting a hangover with drinking alcohol might well have been chosen because of previous hearsay "evidence" heard mentioned by someone they had associated with previously or heard speak of such as a presumed rational "answer" told to them after the event that they spoken of to someone they came into contact with afterwards. However, the example used is one of the primary associative kind because of its widespread presence of familiarity with many people. In other words, an example that did not have a "common" presence amongst various people could not be used as effectively to associate the presence of primary, secondary and tertiary types of association, even though this string of criteria were not labeled in this manner in the example.

Examples we use are of a primary association type, that may not have the relevance we intend for them to have in providing an illustration of associations which are based on "common-sense rationality" contrasted with "scientific-sense rationality". Take for example those who may want to assume that the beginning time and date of the pages in this peace series attests to a presumption of start and finish times for each page. Yet, this is not the case for several different pages since I may work on several pages at a given moment, going back and forth between them as well as working on other ideas for different series elsewhere. Hence, the association of time and duration between start and finish is a false presumption that might be considered for every page.

Primary associations account for both bad and good realizations termed cause -and- effect. An example of bad associations is that between those who exhibit what were once described as activities thought to bring about effects interpreted in a negative way. Such people might have been labeled as a witch. Other examples can well be described for causes attributed to illness, before the idea of disease became established... even though there may well have been those with an intuitive appreciation of "something" causing an event, even if the word(s) for the "something" were not yet in any common vocabulary. The rationality associated with "common sense" may well differ from the "rationality" of "scientific sense", and may even create conditions which originate a common-sense of irrationality... or even a scientific-sense of irrationality born from an individual or a community of individuals... all because they hear or do not hear the repetition of one or more given sounds (in the form of information) when making their judgments. If such sounds do not occur in the associative manner which most people in a group have adopted as being rational, the lack of such may well be cause for rejecting one or more ideas.

Hence, sustaining peace over long stretches of time or "forever", may require everyone to hear the same sound(s) or even different sound(s) in the same way so that a common-sense of rationality can be associated with a scientific-sense of rationality... or even irrationality, so long as everyone agrees with the same notion(s) and it is the accepted standard everyone complies with. Yet, let us ask if there is more peace exhibited amongst those who are deaf? Indeed, is there more peace exhibited by those who share one or more handicaps? Do scientific communities share a common notion of peace? Or are there skirmishes, battles, and even wars amongst different scientists or scientific communities... and it is they who associate themselves with physically aggressive others in order to impose their beliefs by way of supporting (actively or by non-interference), those who do like to actually engage in warring activities with armaments devised by scientists and inventors?

Could we stop all wars by preventing scientists and inventors from engaging in activities which supply ideas for armaments or tactical operations to be used by those who like to participate in military activities? And even though some scientists, inventors or manufactures may claim that they can not stop anyone from using their ideas for warring activities, could we impose laws forbidding the development of all ideas being used for war? If so, how do we implement such an imposition when even the United Nations permits the usage of military activity in some cases... or does not act like an at-the-ready police force to stop any and all military activity against civilians? No less, when there exists a Nobel Peace Committee that defines a Nobel prize of peace defined by the efforts of those engaged in anti-war activities, instead of promoting peace through an alternative analysis as analysts of peace have pursued... but frequently stop short because an analysis of peace is expected to be associated with war; how can any real peace be sustained when it is either arbitrarily defined or defined solely in association with war?

No doubt there are those who expect to hear an analysis of peace in a traditionally distinctive association with war... and to not do so means the analysis is to be interpreted as wrong, naive, or too divergent from common sense to be understood to have any "common-sense" value, much less application. Such an analysis "does not sound right" because it does not express the frequency associated with the sound(s) of "war". In other words, without such an association, a discussion of peace makes no sense because it is being associated with ideas that do not have common points of reference. When the main idea of peace is the primary association to a lack of war, alternative considerations involving secondary and tertiary cause -and- effect associations which have not been cultivated by cultural standards of common sense, have no "clearly heard" meaning amongst conversations which are mostly absent anyway. In other words, not only is it difficult to introduce new ideas about peace, the problem is increased many fold because the topic of peace is not a common-place topic. There is no social amphitheater where peace is spoken or sung about. There is no reverberating acoustics. There is no deliberate stage performances about peace. Peace, nor conflict resolution are required courses in every single grade in every single school. Whereas the sociability and applicability of music, science, math, philosophy, medicine, economics, citizenship, history, etc., are taught; there is no history of peace (or the lack thereof) being taught. We do not teach a "peace music" or "peace poetry", "peace art", or "peace theater". We do not customarily conceptualize an idea about the mathematics of peace, though the idea about "peace diplomacy" is left up to presumed experts that are rightly seen as charlatans... given the lousy definition and application of peace. In short, we do not know how to associate peace in a larger appreciation combined with other-than-war subject matter. Such associations sound foreign to our ears because humanity is like a clan of primitives still grunting traditional sounds. Humanity needs a new acoustics... and this is not to be solely associated with hearing. The word "acoustics" can be viewed as a metaphor associated to any sense or sensibility.

Needless to say, the sounds of war have different vibrations to those of peace defined as an absence of war. Yet, what is the vibration of sociability in terms of an absence of poverty, hunger, or crime? Are peace and war opposite vibrations that can act to cancel one another out to leave us with a situation we are unable to handle well because too much of our lives and history are associated with one or another extreme? While war is clearly understood as a vibrating intensity, does peace provide it own intensity? Does the intensity in either case create conditions of stress that humanity seeks a release from by reverting to another type of extreme vibration? Does humanity get "tired" (over-stressed) by war that it seeks relief from by engaging in some opposing vibration(s) that are defined as peace, and vice versa? Is humanity addicted to "loud" vibrations of which silence is as much as any sound? Is too much of a good thing eventually to be interpreted as a being bad, and thus a retreat from is sought out because such situations provide alternative forms of stimulation... which can be alternatively produced artificially by an over or under indulgence in one or another nutrient? (In other words, altering the state of one's physical well-being through good or bad food/drink can cause differences in how one is stimulated by an external event.)

If we view the social state of humanity from the perspective of acoustics, in that different conditions represent tuning and temperament in concert with an association to music as an alternative description of peace (or anti-thesis described as war and any inter-mediate between, before or after the two), it is of value to take stock of the idea of tuning and temperament as metaphors applied to sociological contexts. The following article should be noted with this idea in mind, since sociological, governmental, political and philosophical, (amongst others), are representations of different temperaments tuned to of different populations at different moments of history. Peace (and war, as well as all cognitive states), is a study of temperament and tuning... whether or not the "tuning" is carried out by a presumption of a God, Demon, warlord, King, President, musical group, art genre, public "mood", environmental circumstances, or otherwise. For example, the effects of a tornado or afternoon rain, or flood, or appearance of a plague can be viewed in terms of social "tuning" though words such as disaster, war, death, for good or ill are used. Societies seen as different musical compositions can be tuned to one or more complimentary or conflicting melodies... whether or not one or more march for or against the drum being player. Some of us were born marching to the beat of a drummer that no one else appears to hear in the same way. And those (like politicians, business or religious leaders) who try to "tune" the populace to chant the same mantra of belief, very often run into problems due to the manner in which they attempt to "tune the system" according to their respective moral, philosophical and psychological predispositions.

Tuning and Temperament

Introduction

In music, (tuning and temperament is) the adjustment of one sound source, such as a voice or string, to produce a desired pitch in relation to a given pitch, and the modification of that tuning to lessen dissonance. The determination of pitch, the quality of sound that is described as "high" or "low," is based upon the frequency of sound waves.

Two concepts fundamental to the theory of tuning are those of frequency ratio and of consonance and dissonance. A given musical pitch is determined by the frequency of vibration of the sound wave that produces it, as a' = 440 cycles per second. An interval, or distance between two pitches, can thus be mathematically described as the ratio of the frequency of the first pitch to the frequency of the second. Various frequency ratios can be reduced to the same basic relationship; for example, 440:220 and 30:15 and 750:375 can all be reduced to the ratio 2:1.

When two tones are sounded together the subjective reaction may be anything from one of perfect consonance to one of extreme dissonance. Dissonance is produced by beats (interference between pulsations of sound waves), and it is found that maximum dissonance occurs when the rate of beats between the two tones is about 33 per second. Consonance results from the absence of beats, which occurs only when the ratio between the frequencies of the two tones is numerically simple. When the two tones are tuned to the same pitch, they are said to be in unison (ratio 1:1) and their consonance is absolute. Next in order of consonance comes the octave (2:1), the interval between c and c' (encompassing eight notes of the piano keyboard); another highly consonant interval is the fifth (3:2, as from c to g). When a unison, octave, or fifth is slightly mistuned, the resulting combination is markedly dissonant and is judged "out of tune." The slight mistunings that occur in systems of tempered tuning are necessary for reasons that will be discussed later in this article.

The problems of tuning

So long as music consists of melody without harmony, consonance plays little part in the determination of successive pitches in a scale. Many primitive scales are sung, not played, and are variable in the exact pitches of their notes. When instruments are made, it is often necessary to determine precise pitches. The tendency is either to make the steps in the scale sound equal in size or to place them in simple arithmetic relationship to one another. The fundamental unit is the octave, which has the unique property that its two notes are felt in some indefinable way to be the same, though in pitch level they are recognizably different. For this reason, high and low voices naturally sing the same tune an octave apart. In nearly all musical cultures the octave is subdivided into a number of steps, each a simple fraction of an octave. In the diatonic, or seven-note scale, for example, which is the basis of Western music and is represented by the white notes on the piano keyboard, there are five steps of one-sixth of an octave and two of one-twelfth. In contrast to these uncomplicated fractions, the frequency ratios of these intervals are actually the irrational numbers: 6ʃ2:1 and 12ʃ2:1. As has been noted, consonance is related to simple frequency ratios such as 2:1. Consequently, the arithmetic subdivision of the octave can never produce perfectly consonant intervals. This unavoidable fact underlies many of the problems in the history of tuning. Insignificant when notes are heard melodically, it becomes highly important when notes of different pitch are heard simultaneously. The complex development of harmony has been the most striking peculiarity of Western music, and it has brought with it a host of tuning problems.

Apart from the octave, which presents no problem, there are really only three distinct intervals in the diatonic scale the consonance of which is important. These are the fifth (3:2, as C-G), the major third (5:4, as C-E), and the major sixth (5:3, as C-A). The other three consonant intervals are the fourth (4:3, as C-F), the minor sixth (8:5, as C-A♭), and the minor third (6:5, as C-E♭). The intervals of this second group are not truly distinct, for they can be derived from the first three by inversion—i.e., by transposing the lower note of the interval up an octave. Thus, inverting the fifth c-g yields the fourth g-c'. Inverting the major third c-e yields the minor sixth e-c', and inverting the major sixth c-a yields the minor third a–c'. Because of the phenomenon of inversion, if the fifths in a scale are in tune, the fourths also will be in tune. For each of these six intervals the tuning expressed by the above simple frequency ratios sounds "right"; if modified slightly in either direction it sounds seriously out of tune. The same cannot be said of other intervals of the diatonic scale. The major and minor seventh (as c-b and d-c') and the diminished fifth (as b-f'), with their inversions, sound dissonant in any case; they have no one tuning that is clearly more acceptable than another. Hence the harmonic merits of any tuning system depend on the way fifths, major thirds, and major sixths are tuned. In the diatonic scale (indefinitely extended through several octaves) there are six perfect fifths (F-C, C-G, G-D, D-A, A-E, E-B), three major thirds (F-A, C-E, G-B), and four major sixths (F-D, C-A, G-E, D-B). It is impossible to tune the seven notes of the scale so that each of these 13 intervals is maximally consonant. This is the second inescapable obstacle to perfection in the tuning of the diatonic scale.

Classic tuning systems

Of the two ancient Greek systems that were used chiefly in the Middle Ages, one, Pythagorean tuning, makes all the fifths perfectly consonant. As a result, all the major thirds and major sixths are sharp (too wide) by 22 cents (a cent is 1/1200 of an octave) or by the ratio of 81:80. This amount is called a comma of Didymus, and it makes intervals severely dissonant when their notes are sounded simultaneously. Within the gamut, the pitch range in use during the Middle Ages, a major third or sixth mistuned by a comma beats between 6 and 32 times a second. Melodically, the Pythagorean system is satisfactory. (Table 1 compares whole tone and semitone sizes in the four main tuning systems.) Pythagorean tuning makes all five whole tones (the larger steps in the diatonic scale) equal at 9:8 (204 cents), and the two semitones (the smaller steps) equal at 256:243 ( 90 cents). The semitones are considerably less than half the whole tones in size, but this is not particularly objectionable in a melody.

Melodic Comparisons table 1

Ptolemaic tuning, often misleadingly named just intonation, sacrifices one of the fifths (D-A), which is altered to 40:27 from the simpler ratio 3:2, making it flat (too narrow) by a comma. The advantage of this system is that all the major thirds are true, or "in tune," as are all the major sixths except F-D, which is tuned to the ratio 27:16, as in the Pythagorean tuning (instead of to 5:3). The triad D-F-A is quite unusable, although the other triads used are perfectly in tune. (A triad is a chord built of two thirds.) For melody the system has the drawback of employing two different sizes of whole tones: C-D, F-G, and A-B are major tones (9:8, or 204 cents), and D-E and G-A are minor tones (10:9, or 182 cents). The difference is noticeable without being great enough to suggest that they are two purposely distinct intervals. To sing the first phrase of "Three Blind Mice" with the middle note perceptibly too high can hardly have seemed satisfactory at any period.

Although just intonation occupied the attention of many theorists, its disadvantages are so great that it is doubtful whether the system was ever strictly applied to harmonized music. Some kind of temperament may have been practiced empirically long before it was described in writing. The addition over several centuries of the five chromatic notes (the black notes of the piano), giving the full chromatic scale, certainly does nothing to improve either the Pythagorean or the Ptolemaic tuning (see Table 2, which shows the deviation of the four main tuning systems from the ideal tuning of the principal intervals). To either system the use of the chromatic notes adds more true fifths but also more untrue thirds and sixths. The advantages of just intonation over Pythagorean tuning are experienced only in chords made up of white notes. With the development of harmony and the increased use of chromatic notes, both tuning systems became increasingly unsatisfactory.

Harmonic Comparisons table 2a
Harmonic Comparisons table 2b
Harmonic Comparisons table 2c

Temperament

The first mention of temperament is found in 1496 in the treatise Practica musica by the Italian theorist Franchino Gafori, who stated that organists flatten fifths by a small, indefinite amount. This practice tends to spread out the mistuning of the fifth D-A over several fifths, so that all are tolerable although none is perfect. This principle was systematized as mean-tone temperament, first described in 1523. Under this scheme, all the major thirds of the scale are made perfect (i.e., are tuned in the simple ratio 5:4); it results in an imperfection in the tuning of fifths that is spread out evenly over the entire cycle. Specifically, the interval of two octaves and a major third is tuned perfectly and divided into four fifths (C-G-d-a-e'), each of which has the ratio 4ʃ5:1 (compared to 3:2 for a perfectly tuned fifth). The fifths are flat by a quarter of a comma, which is much less dissonant than a comma: it gives a beat rate of 0.9 to 4 per second for fifths that fall within the compass of the medieval gamut. All major sixths are sharp by the same amount. Melodically, the scale resulting from mean-tone temperament is superior to the Ptolemaic (just intonation) scale, for all the whole tones are equal in size, being exactly half a true major third, or 193 cents. This is the source of the system's name: the mean, or average, whole tone. The semitones of the diatonic scale are relatively large, at 117 cents.

Mean-tone temperament, which was specifically designed for keyboard instruments, was an acceptable compromise so long as the black notes used in a composition did not extend beyond E♭ and G♯. As soon as D♯ was needed as well as E♭, the system collapsed. The keyboard provided only one key for E♭ and G♯. This key was tuned as E♭ and with no reference to the G♯ below it. The enharmonic fifth G♯-E♭ (in which E♭ is treated as equal to D♯) is nearly two commas out of tune in the mean-tone system. Worse even than the mistuned fifth of just intonation, it was often given the name "the wolf." Organs were occasionally built with split black keys so that E♭ and D♯ could be differently tuned and also A♭ and G♯. This expedient slightly extended the range of usable harmonies, but a more drastic remedy was soon needed. By spreading out the mistuning of the "wolf" fifth among its neighbours, in the same way that their predecessors had spread out the mistuning of the fifth D-A, musicians of the 17th century moved imperceptibly away from mean-tone temperament, in which the fifths are tuned unequally, toward the system of equal temperament, in which all fifths are equally flat.

In equal temperament, all intervals are made up of semitone units, each of which is set exactly at a 12th of an octave, or 100 cents. A fifth is built of seven semitones; in relation to a pure fifth, it is 2 cents flat. A major third is four semitones and is 14 cents sharp; a major sixth is nine semitones and is 16 cents sharp. Because in equal temperament the intervals are identical in all parts of the chromatic scale, the system is the only one that can accommodate the expanded range of harmonies of 19th- and 20th-century music. Melodically, it fulfills the ideal of equal steps. The price for these great advantages is the total disappearance of perfectly tuned intervals, save only the octave. For the piano and the harpsichord this is scarcely a drawback: the characteristic tone of these instruments is, in any case, rich in dissonant components. Indeed, it has been found that piano tuners systematically set octaves and even unison strings out of tune. But on the organ, with its purer and more sustained tone, the disadvantages of equal temperament are considered by many to outweigh its blessings. In England such musicians as the organist and composer Samuel Sebastian Wesley continued to oppose it even as late as the mid-19th century.

On fretted instruments—such as lutes, guitars, and viols—the frets extend across the fingerboard, producing at any one point divisions of equal lengths on strings of different pitch. Unless equal temperament is used, the positioning of the frets results in mistuned octaves and unisons when the same note is played on different strings. For this reason equal temperament was applied at least as early as the 16th century in the construction of fretted instruments.

It has often been stated that singers and players on instruments of undetermined tuning, such as violins and trombones, naturally use just intonation when performing together. Experimental evidence does not support this theory. In such circumstances musicians tend either to play in equal temperament, or, if anything, to distort intervals away from perfect consonance. Most probably this is the result of generations of conditioning. Moreover, it has been found that few musicians can distinguish melodically between just intonation and equal temperament and that those who can do so prefer the latter.

Tuning and musical history

It is seldom realized what an important effect tuning practices have had on the development of harmony and tonality. From the 10th to the 13th century thirds and sixths—now considered consonant—were treated as dissonances simply because, according to then-current tuning methods, they were dissonances. In Pythagorean tuning, only the bare fifth and octave could provide a tolerable point of repose in music accompanied by the organ. Although just intonation permitted some harmony based on triads, the use of sharpened leading notes (the last note of the scale, leading upward into the first), which by the 16th century had caused the older system of modes to disintegrate, was made acceptable only by the use of some kind of temperament. At a later date it was the existence of lutes tuned in equal temperament that made possible the more extreme experiments in chromaticism of composers such as Luca Marenzio and Don Carlo Gesualdo. The formation of a unified orchestra was probably delayed by the simultaneous practice of two incompatible tuning systems—mean-tone for keyboard instruments, equal temperament for lutes and viols. The decline of viols and their replacement by the violin family may have been hastened by the inability of viols to play with the organ. The modern orchestra began with the Vingt-quatre Violons du Roi (Twenty-four Violins of the King) of Louis XIV, and most later Baroque music is based on a keyboard instrument with from one to 30 members of the violin family playing in mean-tone temperament. The cycle of six related keys, established in the operas of Alessandro Scarlatti and the sonatas of Arcangelo Corelli and followed closely in most of the music of J.S. Bach and George Frideric Handel, is probably a direct outcome of mean-tone temperament. Within the limits of mean-tone temperament, the six keys exhaust the chromatic compass available. On the other hand, "wolf" chords may have been deliberately introduced by Domenico Scarlatti, François Couperin, and other composers to give an added piquancy to certain harpsichord passages. Many harpsichord players, including Bach, would retune a few notes of their instruments to prepare to play a piece in a new key, shifting the "wolf" fifth to part of the scale where it would do no harm. But in organ works such temporary retuning was hardly possible. Bach's organ tuning must have been as close to equal temperament as modern instruments are, although it is known that he was opposed to a strictly mathematical equality of intervals. By his title Well-Tempered Clavier he probably meant a kind of modified mean-tone temperament.

Enharmonic modulation, in which one note (say B♭) is treated as identical to another (say A♯) that actually has the same pitch only in equal temperament, was an exceptional device in Baroque music. But as orchestras became free of keyboard instruments and as keyboard instruments increasingly adopted equal temperament, it became a normal stock-in-trade, allowing the use of a series of key changes in one direction that eventually returns to the original key. Thus, it is not unusual for Mozart to complete the cycle of 12 keys in the course of a movement. Equal temperament permitted 19th-century composers to use the 12 notes of the chromatic scale with the utmost freedom. It also fixed those 12 notes so immutably in the Western musical consciousness that the revolutionary developments of 20th-century music, far from undermining them, have tended to perpetuate them.

Nicholas Temperley, Ed.: Professor of Musicology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Author of The Music of the English Parish Church.

Additional Reading

Works on tuning and temperament include Hermann von Helmholtz, Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik (1862; Eng. trans. by Alexander J. Ellis, On the Sensations of Tone, 1875), still the classic treatment of the subject, with useful additional observations by the translator;

J. Murray Barbour, Tuning and Temperament: A Historical Survey (1951), a comprehensive study of the theoretical aspects of the subject, with a good bibliography;

Llewelyn S. Lloyd and Hugh Boyle, Intervals, Scales and Temperaments (1963), designed for the musician; Paul C. Greene, "Violin Intonation," Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 9:43–44 (1937), disposes of the theory that violinists naturally play in just intonation;

Roger E. Kirk, "Tuning Preferences for Piano Unison Groups," ibid., 31:1644–48 (1959), shows that musicians prefer groups of unison strings on the piano to be mistuned;

D.W. Martin and W.D. Ward, "Subjective Evaluation of Musical Scale Temperament in Pianos," ibid., 33:582–585 (1961), shows that musicians do not prefer just intonation to equal temperament;

Fritz A. Kuttner and J. Murray Barbour, The Theory of Classical Greek Music; Meantone Temperament in Theory and Practice; and The Theory and Practice of Just Intonation, Musurgia Records, Theory Series A, No. 1–3, an opportunity to hear the three major tuning systems that preceded equal temperament, both in scales and chords and in actual music.

Source: "Tuning and Temperament." Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite, 2013.



— End of page 59 —



Date of Origination: Tuesay, 18-April-2017... 08:39 AM
Date of initial posting: Tuesday, 25-April-2017... 11:33 AM
Updated posting: Saturday, 31-March-2018... 1:01 PM