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FWD: Bach's Tuning (correction)

🔗Paul Hahn <Paul-Hahn@...>

9/23/1995 5:50:27 AM
On Sat, 23 Sep 1995, I wrote:
> The problem with this is that Marpurg is simply wrong. A temperament
> with all major thirds sharper than pure (which is _all_ that we really
> know about Bach's tuning from evidence like this) is by no means
> required to have all fifths flat; that is a much, much stricter
> requirement. It is triviality itself to think of lots of tunings in
> which all thirds are wide but many fifths are just. Barnes, Vallotti,
> Werckmeister III, and any number of Neidhardt's tunings all fulfill
> these conditions, just to start with.
>
> If you know of any documents in which Kirnberger himself, not filtered
> through his rhetorical adversary Marpurg, admits that Bach tuned all
> fifths flat, please cite it.

In the above passage, please substitute "all fifths flat or all thirds
smaller than Pythagorean" for "all fifths flat", etc.

--pH (manynote@library.wustl.edu or http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote)
O
/\ "Do you like to gamble, Eddie?
-\-\-- o Gamble money on pool games?"

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