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Well Temperaments and Meantone

🔗Daniel Wolf <DJWOLF_MATERIAL@...>

7/4/1997 11:28:05 PM
Something has always been rather mysterious to me - in the late Baroque,
the use of keys beyond the six good ones in meantone expanded to the point
where several composers (and Sebastian Bach was not alone) composed worksventuring into all available keys. We usually assume that some variety ofwell temperament was demanded. And yet, a later generation, that of Mozart
and Haydn, would be again satisfied with the key variety offered by
meantone. Clearly, this reflects well-known differences in musical style
and form, but it also suggests some of the factors in a given style and
form that lead to their exhaustion as well as the factors that seem to
transcend a given style and are useful to later generations. While Bach'scontrapuntal technique appeared to lead to a cul-de-sac of never-ending
modulations and would only be rediscovered in very different contexts (late
Beethoven, Schoenberg), Handel's use of key characteristics was extremelyinfluential upon immediately following generations - Mozart especially. And
as meantone was sufficient for most of Handel, it was also sufficient if
not essential, to Mozart.

The convention wisdom is that there was a meantone era, then an era of well
temperaments, and then 12tet. It is perhaps more useful to think of a
larger meantone era from which well temperaments branched off into a deadend, and then a separate emergence of equal temperament in the first halfof the 19th century, during which time, incidentally, accurate metronomesand watches with second hands - both useful in setting a temperament -
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