Stuart Isacoff's book

Because I happen to work at a bookstore, I noticed "Temperament" the day it
was released and read it that week. I just read Kyle Gann's review, and I
pretty much agree with what he had to say; there really is not much to the
book besides historical digressions and many weak arguments in favor of
12-ET, most of which are downright absurd. There is one passage where 12-ET
is compared to an "advance" in sculpture, where proportions of a figure in
marble are consciously altered because our perceptions of proportion depend
on the negative space and the relative depth of the contours of the figure.
The passage referred to a hand sculpted in the wrong proportion, which looks
right because white things look bigger than they are. He implies that, 'in
the same way' pitches need to be made incorrect so that we perceive them as
being correct. Obviously this is a big honking musical non sequitur. The
book abounds with that kind of nonsense. Forced, illogical analogies appear
page by page with stultifying regularity. Isacoff wasn't trying to write a
technical book, so Gann's criticism that there are no charts and graphs
doesn't really have a point. For the general public, I think it's nice to
see a 'popular' book written about a topic that I happen to specialize in.
The fact that it contains a load of BS doesn't really bother me, because
Isacoff does this along with the offering of a decent introduction to some
history associated with the topic, even though most of it is not musical
history. As Gann noted, Isacoff follows a formula of mentioning some tawdry
detail every other page, which is predictable and annoying. But in fact the
month of its release I sold this book to several people who just thought it
sounded interesting, and really for those people who aren't really interested
in more than an entertaining read, I don't think it's such an offensive book.
Even though it contains nothing of consequence for me or anyone else who
knows better, and the BS is offensive if you take it seriously, I have to
admit that 'Temperament' contains more about tuning than college music theory
texts do. Most people with degrees in music probably don't know half of
what's in the book, and let's face it, most people have never even heard of
this stuff. Obviously, better books need to be written.

Aaron