Bach's Tuning (even longer)

On Wed, 27 Sep 1995, Aleksander Frosztega wrote:
>>"As pointed out by Prof. Rasch, Kirnberger admitted several times to
>>Marpurg that Bach tuned each one of his fifths a bit flat."
>
>Frankly, I don't know what I was refering to. I thought I had remembered
>reading a reference to flat fifths somewhere; one hour of going through my
>notes yielded nothing, however. My apologies to yourself, Mr. Reinhard
>and members of this List for this flub.

Thank you; I accept your apology.

[snip]
>Sorry, my original quote should have read: "What Marpurg probably meant
>to say was that if all the major thirds where to be made [equally as] wide, a
>major third, wide by a syntonic comma, was not possible." Marpurg,
>however, was still wrong. The passage in question here is, admittedly,
>sloppy work on the part of Marpurg. As anyone familiar with his work in
>temperament knows, this is not characteristic of Marpurg's work, where he
>is one of the most precise writers in18th-century Germany.

Gee--maybe it was someone else pretending to be him? :-)

[snip]
>I have spent many years reading the primary sources. In writing my
>dissertation, I've read all of Marpurg, all of Kirnberger and everyone else
>that dealt with tuning and temperament in Germany. Undoubtedly, I've
>missed some sources. But not a lot, I trust. Unlike today, when scientific
>writing tends to adhere to the "stylus dragneticus," 18th-century German
>scientific writing was very personal (there are exceptions) and one quickly
>becomes almost "personally" familiar with the writer. One knows how they
>thought and gets a strong feeling as to what they would react like given a
>certain set of circumstances. Spending so much time with them, I almost
>feel as if I knew these men, who died over 200 years ago. If I make a
>conjecture, it is based on this intimacy and a body of evidence. It is not
>incorrect jurisprudence to extrapolate postulates based on a given body of
>evidence and knowledge of the subject's past behavior.

Well, I have to admit I'm impressed by the amount of time and effort
you've spent on the subject. Nevertheless, I assert that a subjective
impression based on vast experience is still a subjective impression.
Surely, drawing upon all that knowledge, you can point to some piece of
objective evidence that would convince a skeptic?

[snip]
>>The following two quotes are from _A History of Key Characteristics in
>>the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries_, by Rita Steblin (UMI
>>Research Press, 1983), already cited once in this thread.
>>
>>p.91:
>>: It is known that Marpurg's attack caused Kirnberger much bitter
>>: anguish: he poured out his vexation in a series of letters to Forkel
>>: from 1779-80. . . . although Kirnberger did not publish a
>>: counterattack himself, he did include a defense written by the
>>: important mathematician and military officer at the Berlin court,
>>: Georg Friedrich Tempelhof (1737-1807).
>
>Although I admire Ms. Steblin's writings, I believe that she is wrong here.
>Although Tempelhof may have begun the review in question, Kirnberger
>himself (trying to pull a 'Marpurg') must have finished it. This is evident in
>the break of literary style (Tempelhof's and Kirnberger's litterary styles are
>completely dissimilar) and I would be very surprised indeed that if, upon
>meeting Kirnberger in the afterlife, he would tell me that Tempelhof wrote
>the whole thing... ;)

If I may remind anyone who may still be reading this seemingly
interminable thread, this all came up because Mr. Frosztega asserted
that Kirnberger failed to rebut Marpurg's assertions because he knew
Marpurg was right. Whether Kirnberger or Tempelhof wrote the essay in
question, while an interesting question, is not particularly germane;
the fact is, Kirnberger took vigorous action to defend his position.

(BTW, I'm an atheist. I don't plan to wait around for an afterlife I
don't believe in to ask Kirnberger to resolve the issue. :-)

>>p.92:
>>: Marpurg, the avowed disciple of Rameau, had drawn clear battle lines
>>: between his theories in support of equal temperament and those of
>>: Kirnberger. Since the latter had declared that his primary intention in
>>: _Die Kunst_ was to transmit the theoretical principles of J.S. Bach,
>>: Marpurg's cruelest blow was the accusation that Kirnberger was not
>>: faithful to Bach--not faithful because, as Marpurg contended, Bach had
>>: actually taught Kirnberger to tune in equal temperament.
>
>Bzzzz. Wrong again. The quote to which Ms.Steblin refers (contained in
>the infamous 23er Abschnitt of Marpurg's _Versuch_ ) is not about
>whether Kirnberger was being faithful to Bach or not. It was about
>Kirnberger's invocation of authority over empirical evidence. Read the
>section yourself, then we can talk (_Versuch_ [1776], pp.182-219).

I'm probably going to have to concede this one, because my German,
sadly, is much worse that Mr. Frosztega's English, and I don't know when
I'd be able to spend the time to work through that much of it.

[snip]
>>: backfired, and Kirnberger was able to end _Die Kunst_ with the
>>following
>>: passage taken from a letter that C.P.E. Bach had sent him:
>>:
>>: The conduct of Herr Marpurg against you is abominable. . . . You
>>: may proclaim that my fundamental principles and those of my late
>>: father are anti-Rameau.
>>:
>>: In this manner Kirnberger managed to get in a final blow. Although it
>>: is not clear whether this quotation applies specifically to unequal
>>: temperament and key characteristics, there is no reason to believe that
>>: this topic--so important in Kirnberger's writing--should be excluded
>>: from the anti-Rameauist principles espoused by the Bachs.
>
>Wow. Ms. Steblin streches quite a bit in drawing this conclusion.

Perhaps, but it seems no greater a stretch than some that Rasch makes in
his article.

>My feeling is that the passage in question refers to Marpurg's _Versuch_ on
>the whole (remember that the second half of the _Versuch_ (90-some
>pages) has nothing to do with temperament but is a giant polemic on
>Kirnbergers harmonic theories as opposed to Rameau's (which Marpurg
>really didn't fully understand himself).

If it has nothing to do with temperament, then it really isn't going to
help with the question at hand, is it?

Okay, let me see where we stand here:

1. You admit you accidentally misrepresented the evidence Rasch
offered in his article.

2. You admit Marpurg made an error (however uncharacteristic) in the
passage Rasch quotes.

3. You assert that your great familiarity with the relevant literature
qualifies you to speculate about the matter in question, but you
have so far presented no concrete evidence to back up that
speculation.

4. You then go off on several tangents, which as far as I can see
(with one possible exception) have very little to do with what
temperament Bach used.

Well, gosh, I'm convinced! Can't understand why I didn't see it
before--of COURSE Bach used equal temperament!

(Sarcasm aside, really, Mr. Frosztega: if the evidence is really that
overwhelming, can't you present us with some of it? What little you've
given us so far I find unimpressively weak. Bach surely had input on
the construction of some organs; if any surviving ones are in ET and are
known to have been that way since Bach's time, that would be a good
sign. Tuning instructions reliably attributed to him would also do.)

--pH (manynote@library.wustl.edu or http://library.wustl.edu/~manynote)
O
/\ "Do you like to gamble, Eddie?
-\-\-- o Gamble money on pool games?"

Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl
with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Fri, 29 Sep 1995 13:12 +0100
Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI)
for id EAA13134; Fri, 29 Sep 1995 04:11:49 -0700
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 1995 04:11:49 -0700
Message-Id: <009971F584C0AB39.29CF@ezh.nl>
Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu
Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu
Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu