AW.: Intonational System Earlier Musicians had in Mind

In einer Nachricht vom 12/11/99 12:05:52 PM (MEZ) Mitteleurop�ische
Zeitschreibt Ascend11@aol.com:

<< I'd like to put in as my opinion that the intonational system
a great many musicians - theoreticians, composers, and many
practicing musicians had in mind was just intonation from the
1400s up until the 1900s. >>

It might be more accurate to put it this way: locally, that is, for vertical
sonorities and single melodic lines, music was conceived of in terms of just
intonation, but when projected onto larger, real, tonal contexts, e.g., a
movement of a composition, the resources and limitations of the prevailing
temperament become co-determinative.

In general, theories of harmony classified chords in terms of internal
interval structure and a static tonal center while theories of counterpoint
were also localized, focusing on patterns of voice leading from note to note
and from note against note. The theoretical tradition says precious little
about how these materials are projected into real harmonic contexts. Indeed,
it is extremely difficult to do so: one might say that we think about tonal
music in terms of JI although it is not, much as we orient ourselves locally
on the earth as if the planet were flat (which I am told it is not).

An extremely interesting reading of the history of music theory from Rameau
through Riemann through Schenker and Schoenberg can be found in the emergence
of competing (but not necessarily contradictory) theories of the relationship
between pitch (i.e. tuning) structure and large scale musical form.

Although Schenker's ideas about underlying tonal structures (Klang, Ursatz,
Urlinie etc.) and the way musical surfaces emerge from these structures and
Schoenberg's "structural functions" are 20th century theories, the repertoire
they apply to most directly is that of the 18th and early 19th centuries, and
a reading (one might even say a _deconstructive_ reading) of both theorists
as covert exponents of meantone temperament would be most instructive.