RE: Re: re: TD 411 -- Reply to John deLaubenfels on diss onance...

Daniel Wolf wrote,

>Just to throw a wrench in the works: Rudolph Rasch, who has the credentials

>of a real 12tet skeptic, has studied the whole history of circular
>collections predating and including Bach's WTC, came to the conclusion that

>Bach had indeed wanted something like 12tet. The question is then "how much

>like 12tet?", and the answer probably sounded something like one of "well
>temperaments" then being propagated as solutions allowing one to play in
all
>keys of a 12-tone cycle.

As I wrote in my response to Margo, I strongly agree.

>I think that Paul Erlich and I agree that meantone largely defines the
>resources and limitations of the common practice harmonic language, and
that
>there was an initial move towards equal temperament in the late Baroque
(the
>so-called well temperaments) that did not really become realized in a final

>way until the middle of the 19th century. Thus, while there is some Baroque

>repertoire -- like the WTC -- that demands something other than meantone
(or
>meantone plus an active tuning hammer), the music of the Viennese classical

>era, which sticks to the best meantone keys, largely remains within the
>limits of meantone.

I think that the compositional problems that drew Bach and his immediate
successors away from meantone were nothing more than the logistics of
getting an extended meantone (I believe Bach used 25 notated pitches in his
works) out of a 12-key instrument. If keyboards such as the Fokker organ
were widely available in Bach's day, there would have been no need to stray
from meantone temperament, as 25 notes per octave would have fallen easily
under the hands of the performer. Unfortunately, instrument making did not
keep pace with compositional imagination, and circular temperament was the
only solution. Even Mozart, as we've discussed, regularly used more than 12
notated pitches in his meantone-conceived music, so temperament would have
been a necessity for much of his music as well. Not until the 1800s did
composers really begin using 12-tone circular temperament in ways beyond
what extended meantone makes possible -- for example, applying diminshed
seventh chords to resolve a minor third or tritone away from where expected,
or modulating rapidly and repeatedly though major thirds, which only returns
to the same key in a 12-tone circular temperament.

I wrote,

>Even Mozart, as we've discussed, regularly used more than 12
>notated pitches in his meantone-conceived music, so temperament would have
>been a necessity for much of his music as well.

Meantone is already temperament -- I meant "circular temperament would have
been a necessity for much of his music as well" -- since Mozart wasn't known
to bring special split-key instruments around with him.