TUNING digest 619 - Jorgensen book

Dear Neil,

I helped Owen Jorgensen get the "Tuning" book ready for publication.
It could have been much longer, but the author chose to limit himself to
English language sources.

The *technology* needed to tune 12ET was certainly available much
earlier than the turn of this century, and the mathematical understanding
of 12ET has been with us for three centuries (or more). But the ability
to prove 12ET strictly by ear, by comparing the beat speeds of adjacent
intervals, was not common until the early years of this century.

Part of the problem was inertia. Piano tuners did not use the
harmonic series as a tool, as they do today. They prefered the results
of the older methods, which were based on a melodic comparison of
intervals.

Owen Jorgensen is not on line, but I'm sure he would appreciate any
correspondence on matters of tuning. His address is:

3806 U.S. 2 West
Moran, MI 49760-9719


Laurence W. Key

(flute001@peabody.jhu.edu)

1 East Mount Vernon Place
Baltimore, Maryland 21202
Phone: (410) 659-4009


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