Replies to John deLaubenfels

John deLaubenfels wrote,

>I'm actually somewhat skeptical that
>it'll be less jarring, however, because once the ear has heard the
>tuning of, say, a Db, the much flatter C# may sound mis-tuned

I doubt it, because a modulation will have usually occured between one and
the other.

>I thought that, the older the music, the better COFT would be against
>meantone, but I was wrong!

Why would you have thought that?

>The COFT
>values closely track meantone, with sharply narrowed fifths all along
>the line. I'm not quite sure why this is

Well, meantone was basically designed to be a COFT for music using 7 or more
consecutive notes on the chain of fifths. Scarlatti's music certainly falls
into that category, as does most of the music that preceded him since the
invention of meantone.

Or was there something in particular that made the meantone result
surprising?