RE: Reply to Bill Alves

I wrote,

>I think Brian's point is that music at the time tended to have at least 14
>different notated notes, so that if meantone tuning were to be used, the
>12-note keyboard would lead to some horrible wolves. Just tuning of course
>would require vastly more keys, assuming it could be considered a
>satisfactory tuning (which I don't happen to believe).

Bill wrote,

>14 notated pitches per octave in 1850?

At least.

>Split keys were certainly used in
>the 17th and 18th centuries, but 12 keys per octave was still the norm. 1/4
>comma meantone with 12 keys per octave is still quite usable on the vast
>majority of music written in the 18th century

Well, the vast majority of the music was not the best music (i.e., Bach).

>and well temperaments
>rendered 12 even more useful. I can see how mass production necessitated
>standardization of the construction of keyboards, but I remain unconvinced
>that 12TET is the only possible (or even most likely) result of such
>standardization.

Perhaps. But by 1850, composers basically assumed they could modulate to any
key, including G# major, and it would sound good. Whether this was a result
of 12TET being shoved down their throats, I don't know.

John Sankey wrote,

>If Brian thinks that a 12 tone mean-tone-tuned keyboard leads
>to wolves, he hasn't played much music of the period when
>meantone was in use. I'm working on William Byrd's harpsichord
>music right now (1543-1623), using pure quarter-comma meantone,
>and there are NO wolves.

This is off the topic by a few centuries, but what the heck. Byrd's Pavans
and Galliards happen to be the only meantone recording I own, and certainly
Byrd did for 12-tone meantone what Bach did for 12-tone circulating in the
WTC. However, if I'm not mistaken, there is one place where Byrd uses a
F-G#-C triad resolving to a C major triad (or some transposition of that).
Whether you call that a wolf or a septimal minor triad is a matter of taste,
I guess.

Meantone was in use for a long time after 1623, though.


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