Baroque era questions/answers

Hey Reinhard...jeez, thanks for the detailed answers to my questions about various Bach era ideas. You know, I wish I had more time in life to study everything I want...the whole area of early European music is fascinating, and very vast. But, I'll keep plugging away; and hanging out on the tuning forums is a good way to pick up info. If you can recommend any good books on this subject, not just related to Bach but the whole era and what was happening, I'd love to check them out.

But you know, in digest 4198 you mentioned my "it could be anything" attitude in regards to how Bach tuned; actually, for me, I haven't yet come to any definitive conclusions about this subject...that's why I'm asking all these questions, trying to get more info on the tuning practices of that era. It seems that there's a lot of folks with conflicting ideas, and I'm trying to sort it all out...if that's ever possible, since we weren't there, and we're all trying to come to intelligent conclusions from what we have studied about that era. And, I just saw Brad Lehman's article on how he interpreted the design on the cover of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier; very interesting stuff, for sure. And, I have the Goldberg Variations CD by Richard Egarr, where he uses that temperament...it is beautifully played, and sounds great to boot. Egarr says, in the liner notes, in regards to the tuning: "Bradley Lehman seems to have discovered 'the truth,' or at least A truth." Well, that seems like a good attitude to take regarding all of this; maybe Bach, and others of his day, tried a number of different tunings...why not? I mean, these were some of the greatest musical minds in history; why WOULDN'T they have experimented with different different systems? If a guy like me enjoys playing in numerous systems, it certainly wouldn't be a giant surprise to find that a titan like Bach tried out various ways of tuning.

And, perhaps he was inspired by tuning theorists like Werckmeister, and came up with his own take on temperament...again, why not? I'm sure, as I learn more about this era, I'll get more insights into what could have been happening then. But, we do know that there were many different ideas in the air about how to tune, and 12 eq had not yet come to dominate the scene.

Oh yeah; you also mentioned how playing Coltrane in 14 equal would be fine, at least as an experiment. Well, it seems to me that going from a well temp to 12 eq isn't nearly as big a jump as going from 12 to 14...looks like the 3rds and 5ths in 14 may be a bit stinky for jazz, maybe I'm missing something (of course, the way a tuning actually sounds may be different than the way it "looks" on paper). I do think jazz in 19 works great, I've tried using the typical jazz chord progressions in 19, and they work very well. My piece "Swing 19" from "Acoustic Stick" is, I believe, a good example of jazz in 19, more in the future...thanks for all the interesting discussion, I'm learning a lot....Hstick
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--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, <microstick@...> wrote:
> I do think jazz in 19 works great, I've tried using the typical jazz
chord progressions in 19, and they work very well. My piece "Swing 19"
from "Acoustic Stick" is, I believe, a good example of jazz in 19,
more in the future...thanks for all the interesting discussion, I'm
learning a lot....Hstick

Have you ever tried jazz in 22? When people write in that, it often
seems to come out sounding jazzy. I wouldn't know how to write actual
jazz, but I put things which sound what I call "jazzy" in my music
sometimes; I thought 46 had a natural tendency in that direction.