Good work, Joe, going to the source re Mr. Woolhouse's position

I just wanted to say I really appreciate Joe Monzo's
getting original source information on Mr. Woolhouse,
and also Margo Schulter's careful research on historical
assumptions re intonational systems and very informative
recent post.

Mr. Fischer, who quoted Mr. Woolhouse as strongly
advocating equal temperament not only for keyboard
instruments but also singers, was himself a strong
advocate of equal temperament. I'll send a quote
from him re the final universal acceptance of equal
temperament which he reported as having occurred
"within the last 50 years" in which he compares
equal temperament with the earlier tuning methods
shortly.

I suspect that around 100 years ago equal temperament
may have been promoted with such forcefulness that
history could have been partially rewritten and a
bias towards equal temperament and against anything
else have been implanted in musicians and music
students which still affects attitudes in the present.
I believe that equal temperament is to an extent based
on people's accepting an illusion. In order to maintain
the illusion, voices raising doubts about it mustn't be
allowed to be heard too widely.

People could have believed that they were doing the
right thing in promoting such an illusion as equal
temperament was extremely practical and people's
enjoyment of equal tempered music would be spoiled
if they were to have doubts raised about the music's
quality being compromised in some way (through
temperament). One music professor told me that he
had always been told that the deviations in pitches
introduced by equal temperament were so small that
they had a negligible effect on the way the music
sounded. When he heard side by side piano performances
of simple pieces in equal temperament and mean tone
temperament he said that to his surprise he found that
there was a big difference and that to him the mean
tone version sounded better than did the equal tempered
version. After having heard the comparison, his reaction
was that it seemed to him difficult to understand how
equal temperament could have been universally adopted
by the music world.

I'll send the page and a half quotation from Fischer soon.

Dave Hill La Mesa, CA