Bach and Tuning by Johnny Reinhard

Bach and Tuning by Johnny Reinhard, American Festival of Microtonal
Music, New York, 2009, pp. 243.
Johnny Reinhard, a leading voice in the world of microtonal music, has
written a new 243-page narrative called “Bach and Tuning,” available either
as a word file on compact disc ($20) or as a beautiful color copy spiral
bound ($50) by email from afmmjr@.... Chapters spotlight historical
contributions by Kirnberger, Werckmeister, Buxtehude, and Walther, and
intertwine theoretical analysis with Thuringian Aesthetics, Bach Cities, and
critical details of the art and science of tuning. Reinhard's basic thesis is
that the world got it wrong: ironically, the most obvious candidate for the
performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music has been completely overlooked –
Werckmeister III tuning. Andreas Werckmeister began his historic
explorations into well temperament with equal temperament experimentation, but
when, in 1706, he emphasized the need for 48 keys (a repeat of the 12 major
and 12 minor keys) to fully represent his tuning system’s variety of key
characters (Werckmeister, Musicalishe Paradoxal-Discourse (1707), p. 72), he
set the stage for Bach to create two books of The Well Tempered Clavier.
Werckmeister’s innovation – Werckmeister III Tuning – was intended as a
superior innovation to equal temperament, and has 39 distinctive musical
intervals, each with a uniquely different sentiment. The book opens up a whole
new dimension to Bach’s musical expression, and to the understanding of
music. http:www.afmm.org

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