"Novel" Tunings: A very useful caution

In a very recent post, Paul Erlich noted that a tuning I described here
last month in fact had been previously published.

> (BTW, Helmholtz/Ellis have precedence over you in the "Schulter
> Artusian 5-limit Just" tuning.)

Hello, there, and I thought it maybe prudent just to note quickly that the
title you cite in quotes for this tuning (based on the schisma fifth of
16384:10935) was the invention of another participant. I point this out
with due humor, and also as a good example to show that just about any
tuning scheme may in fact have a long previous history.

Of course, your invaluable information is one of the benefits of
posting to this list, precisely to find out about how a tuning that
seems unfamiliar was actually documented many decades or even
centuries ago.

Checking back, I'm relieved to see that my initial post included the
statement:

Also, while I'm not sure if the complete 5-limit scale given below
has been published, once one is familiar with the concept of a
"schisma fifth" (described by Owen Jorgensen, for example), the rest
of the scheme is easy to formulate -- although not necessarily to
tune on an actual instrument.

Thus while I wasn't familiar with the Helmholtz/Ellis treatment of
this specific scale until you called it to my attention in your post,
I'm not so surprised, given that _On the Sensations of Tone_ gives
considerable attention to the schisma.

In other cases, precedents for what may seem a "novel" tuning idea may
be a bit more unexpected. For example, a few months ago, I got an idea
for a "reverse Vallotti-Young temperament" with all six fifths
involving only diatonic notes pure, and the others (involving
accidentals) tempered by 1/6 Pythagorean comma each. My idea was that
it might be an interesting "well-temperament" for adventurous
accidentalism of a 14th-century variety, maybe carried a bit further
than was typical at that time.

Fortunately, I happened to stumble on Owen Jorgensen's section in his
1991 book on a French musician in England named Anton Bemetzrieder who
published the same tuning in 1808, an era when such a neo-Pythagorean
approach might seem especially unlikely. As Jorgensen notes, it is an
utter reversal of typical 18th-19th century concepts of "key color" --
although it might lend an interesting color to certain 14th-century or
similar modern styles.

Thank you again for your message, which at once shares invaluable
information, illustrates the communicative potential of this list, and
serves as another cautionary example of a field rich with precedents.

Most appreciatively,

Margo Schulter
mschulter@value.net