Re: [tuning] Digest Number 2855

Peter wrote, quoting Gene:

>> It's there if you carefully read between the lines, since it says
>> "tones", not "major tones" and "minor tones". Two distinct kinds of
>> tones are not being assumed. Unless you assume two semitones must make
>> up a tone, which historically one cannot do, we are left with meantone.
>
> I think you are reading into it something which is not there. Can you
> provide an independent reference for your terms "major tone"
> and "minor tone"? On this side of the Atlantic a 'tone' is a class of
> interval equal to two successive semitones.

Having grown up on the same side of the Atlantic as the poster, let me
reassure the rest of the group that the English--with the quoted writer an
exception--are as aware as the North Americans, the contintental Europeans
and everyone else here, that until very recently C-D and D-E were not
intended to be the same distance apart. Even as recently as the turn of
the century Bruckner learnt this from his composition teacher, who taught
that D-A wasn't as good a fifth as the others because it contained two
minor tones, and had to be "resolved" like a dissonance! It's not a "side
of the Atlantic" thing, it's a "how ignorant you are or aren't". And for
crying out loud, don't assume that because you haven't heard of something
or it doesn't appear in the "Oxford Companion to Music", that someone here
just made it up. Get a real reference, or look into something online
before accusing someone else of sophistry when they are by far your
superior in these matters.

For my part, a much more direct irritant than any crackpot beliefs
expounded offsite is this poster's assumption, based on ignorance, that no
one else here has got a clue! I've never seen anything quite like it.

--Jon Wild