RE: Temperament in English Virginal Music

Gordon Rumson wrote:

>... what
>temperament would be suitable for English Virginal music? I just played
>through a Fantasy ut, re mi etc, by John Bull from the Fitzwilliam
>collection. There is a note:
>
>'This interesting experiment in enharmonic modulation is thus
tentatively
>expressed in the MS; the passage proves that some kind of "equal
>temperament" must have been employed at this date.'
>
>I doubt that it proves that. But what temperament would have been
>characteristic of the time?

Quarter-comma meantone was nearly universal for keyboards at the time,
and would be most appropriate for all of the Virginalist repertoire with
one exception - that single piece by Bull. There's nothing tentative
about the enharmonic equivalence it assumes. Among other things, there
is an A - Db - E chord that must be considered the same as A - C# - E.
Thus an extension to meantone would not work.

It certainly does not require equal temperament - any 12-note circulating
one will do. Personally, I think ET was most likely what Bull had in
mind. Mersenne had not yet published his string length figures, but as
far as I am aware ET was the only circulating temperament being discussed
at the time.

There was a discussion on the harpsichord list a while ago on what
temperament to use for this piece. Various people have successfully used
everything from ET to one (the name of which escapes me at the moment)
with 10 pure fifths and two 1/2-Pythagorean comma fifths.

Bull's fantasy was a one-time exception to the use of quarter-comma
meantone, not to be repeated for almost a century. Perhaps he did tune
ET for the piece, but no one liked the sound of it?


Gordon Collins
gordon_collins@jhuapl.edu