RE: Re: TD 411 -- Reply to John deLaubenfels on dissonan ce and style

Margo Schulter wrote,

>While my own focus is mainly on medieval and Renaissance music, I
>would add one comment about at least some keyboard works of Bach: here
>the subtly graduated scale of tension, or "acoustical dissonance,"
>afforded by performance in a period well-temperament is indeed an
>expressive feature which neither a JI rendition (7-limit or otherwise)
>nor meantone can provide.

Though I would agree (perhaps strongly) with Margo, it should be pointed out
that there is no record of Bach ever mentioning a subtly graduated scale of
tension among the keys. Although quantitative studies of the WTC appear to
reveal that its composition was indeed informed by such a tuning, it is also
known that a good number of its pieces were simply transposed from earlier
works, originally in meantone or meantone-like keys of a well-temperament,
into the supposedly most "dissonant" or Pythagorean-like keys of
well-temperament. So one cannot be too dogmatic about a particular form of
circulating temperament for Bach's late keyboard works. All we know for sure
is that, once he had adopted the premise of a closed 12-tone temperament,
Bach instructed that the major thirds be tuned sharp in order to achieve
that end.