Book Description
A captivating look at how musical temperament evolved, and how we could (and perhaps should) be tuning differently today.
Ross W. Duffin presents an engaging and elegantly reasoned exposé of musical temperament and its impact on the way in which we experience music. A historical narrative, a music theory lesson, and, above all, an impassioned letter to musicians and listeners everywhere, How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony possesses the power to redefine the very nature of our interactions with music today.
For nearly a century, equal temperament—the practice of dividing an octave into twelve equally proportioned half-steps—has held a virtual monopoly on the way in which instruments are tuned and played. In his new book, Duffin explains how we came to rely exclusively on equal temperament by charting the fascinating evolution of tuning through the ages. Along the way, he challenges the widely held belief that equal temperament is a perfect, "naturally selected" musical system, and proposes a radical reevaluation of how we play and hear music. 48 illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Very Good Book.......2007-07-14
This book is not only informative about musical temperment and the effect that our present equal temperment has on harmony, it is also well written and funny at times.
A great buy for anyone interested in music history/theory.
Duffin is part of the problem with music today.......2007-04-14
Author and music professor Ross W. Duffin whines in this book that equal temperant (the process of tuning a keyboard instrument, or a harp, for that matter, to a scale that is equally divided into 12 semitones) ruined music, as if no one in the last 300-400 years has wrestled with this problem. This kind of nonissue is a distraction from what is wrong with music today, but that's for another review. Duffin explains that while equal temperament may make fifths sound good, they make thirds and sixths sound too dissonant. Well, anybody who has ever worked with string instruments and vocalists is well aware of this issue--it is no surprise. It's not as if J.S. Bach were unaware of this issue 300 years ago, as he composed for voice, violin, and the keyboard--the man had to tune his own harpsichord by ear. After the complaint about thirds being out of tune, Duffin regresses into an explanation of the overtone series, the circle of fifths, and the history of temperament, but ultimately, is a new tuning system really going to make music any better today?
How DID equal temperament ruin harmony?.......2007-03-25
Ross Duffin's book is good. He gives an excellent history of the various temperaments used in Western music until the 20th century when one temperament -- Equal Temperament -- became the standard. I was surprised, however, that he never really answered the question posed in the title -- how did ET ruin harmony? He does a pretty good job of describing what sounds different about certain intervals -- thirds and fifths in particular -- but he never really discusses harmonic progressions and how temperament affects how they sound. He also discusses how unequal temperaments cause one key to sound different from another and how composers were sensitive to these differences. But again, no real discussion of why erasing these differences with equal temperament 'ruined' harmony.
The great challenge here is writing about something that really must be heard. I frankly agree with Duffin that unequal temperament makes music from the 17th - 19th centuries more interesting to hear. I was hoping he would find words to describe why.
The Problem with Playing the Same Old Tuning.......2007-03-17
Piano players in some ways have it easier than other musicians. For instance, a pianist, if called upon to play a perfect A, presses a button on the instrument, and out comes a perfect A (if the piano tuner has done his job right). Violinists, slide trombonists, and even singers run the risk of sliding around and being too low or too high. But I was surprised to find that there is controversy in such things as how a piano ought to be tuned, or how scales are to be divided. I am not a musician, but in _How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care)_ (Norton), Ross W. Duffin asserts that even classically trained musicians are not aware that there is more than one way to divide scales, and he also asserts that the current predominant system, Equal Temperament (ET), is not necessarily the best for all purposes. "It's all wrapped up in recent evolutions in musical performance and teaching, the result of decades of delusion, convenience, ignorance, conditioning, and oblivion." Musicians are going to get much more out of this book than I did; Duffin says, "It's for everyone who performs or cares about music," but many of the technical aspects of his argument were often above the head of this "carer". Nonetheless, this is an important book to give, again, the vital lesson that much of what we take for granted, much of what we consider fundamental, is only the result of the past's convenient compromises.
The difficulty with dividing up the scale is one of physics and aesthetics. Scales divided into octaves don't quite contain perfectly the fifths (Duffin explains all this) and one solution is to narrow (in musical terms, to "temper") each of the twelve fifths by one twelfth of the missing fit. That is an equal temperament (ET). Even Duffin agrees that equal temperament is an elegant solution to the problem, but like all solutions to complicated problems, it has disadvantages, especially that it makes major thirds dissonant. Musicians originally were not ready to tolerate such harsh major thirds, and so irregular (non-equal) temperaments were preferentially used until the nineteenth century, and Duffin makes the case that even into the twentieth century equal temperament was not the enforced standard it has come to be. In the twentieth century, however, there were many social forces to make temperaments equal. The piano became a central piece of furniture for homes of all classes, and the piano (and to a lesser extent, the organ) became the main instrument that other instruments had to play around. With music instruction becoming more popular, makers of those other instruments found it simpler to make them based on the basic equal temperament system.
Duffin writes that equal temperament has been so thoroughly adopted "... that most musicians today are not even aware that any other systems exist, or that if they exist, that they have any musical worth whatsoever." The biggest drawback in such ignorance is that pre-equal-temperament compositions, of course, have to be fitted onto equal temperament instruments and playing. The enthusiasm for historically accurate performances, even with historic instruments, can never be fully successful without accepting that the composers and players of the time were using historic temperaments rather than the current monolith. "I'm not saying that harmonic intonation should replace ET entirely and substitute its own tyranny," says Duffin, "only that ET is not necessarily the best temperament for every single musical situation encountered by today's musicians." Duffin's book is scattered with sidebar pages to introduce concepts like temperament itself or pure intervals, and also to give accessible capsule biographies of musicians, composers, and music theorists who have taken part in the history of temperaments. One of the musicians so profiled is the cellist Pablo Casals, with whose words Duffin gleefully winds up a mind-stretching work: "Do not be afraid to be out of tune with the piano. It is the piano that is out of tune. The piano with its tempered scale is a compromise in intonation."
A Much-Needed Contribution.......2006-11-22
This is a clear and entertaining explanation of one of the most crucially important (and resolutely ignored) problems in the contemporary performance of historical music: TUNING. The issues are clearly laid out, and the mathematical material deftly presented in a way that even innumerate readers such as myself can understand. This concise book is a great help to me, and is quite accessible to the nonspecialist reader. VERY highly recommended!
Customer Reviews:
Note Regarding Quality of Illustrations.......2006-07-19
Genesis Of A Music is illustrated with photographs of the instruments constructed by Harry Partch for the performance of his music. Unfortunately the illustrations for successive editions have been prepared haphazardly by re-screening the pictures from previous editions. The result is that the pictures in the current edition are inadequate.
People interested in purchasing this book should seek out the previous paperback edition which still had serviceable illustrations.
Highly Recommended.......2005-03-10
This book was recommended to me by James Tenney, that was enough for me. After reading it I discovered, to NO surprise, it is a must read. Tenney giving you musical advice is like EF Hutton giving you financial advice, YOU LISTEN to it very carefully.
You had to be there........2005-01-23
I was a part of Harry's world for a time in the mid 1950s, maybe even a colleague as well as a devotee of sorts. I took a 40 year sabbatical and am again working in the field of musical instrument design/manufacture/performance.
This book is like a bible to me in many ways but what most of the reviews lack is the experience of having "been there, heard/felt that" which is a requirement for really getting it.
All the theoretical/philosophical considerations are mere historical/philosophical blather compared to actually being around the music itself. The implications of "corporeal" in terms of making/experiencing music rather than talking *about* music are very profound. You can get some idea from sound recordings, videos/films, or Web sites but unless you take part in the experience, you have no idea what's happening here.
I'm sure plenty (most?) people who encountered it were isolated from experiencing it fully by their backgrounds (nature or nurture), but for those who were moved, his work was the palpable exemplification of "profound". His picture should appear in the dictionary entry for "genius".
Love.
Most of today's innovators started with this book.......2005-01-18
I disagree that you shouldn't start with this book. Most books that even mention the subject of JI gloss over it, insult your intelligence without providing any real data to make your own decisions, because most of the people writing those books consider JI a curiosity. If you ever read more than one reference to JI, you already know most of what most sources tell you.
Partch is certainly bombastic, which gave me many a chuckle. He was very very defensive, with good reason.
He also deals with subharmonic series- minor tonalities- which makes up a full half of his system, and which is explicitly eschewed by Doty's Primer. Doty denies there is any consonance to it and refuses to discuss it, reducing every harmony into least-common-denominators to find some sort of "absolute consonance level", which results in ratios with huge numbers that tell you nothing about the purpose of the chord. For a minor triad, Partch would say "1/4;1/5;1/6" and Doty would say 10:12:15. Partch also backs his ideas up with everyone from Archytas to Ptolemy to Galilei.
Any other book about or by Partch is focused on the novelty of his instruments, his "43 notes!!!" (which sickened him, being that he often used more or less in various pieces- it is not about the number of notes) or his feelings on life and aesthetics. Partch despised concert music- which doesn't mean a thing to me. This book gives you the facts, the background to actually be able to use the innovations Partch gave to the world.
I would recommend, in addition to this, reading George A. Miller's essay "The Magical Number 7, +/- 2" and any resources you can find on Gestalt perception and the Law of Pragnanz. Without these fundamental perceptual ideas, your 10,000-note octaves will sound like chaos.
Use as directed ONLY........2001-04-09
I'd give this another star, it's a very interesting artifact after all, but I'm afraid my review might be construed, as I'm afraid many readers are approaching this book the wrong way. It is not (nor is it intended to be) a just tuning reference book; it is instead a book about one man's personal musical odyssey: hence the title. If you use it to try to learn about just tuning in particular or tuning in general without already possessing a solid background in acoustics and the history of music theory, you will come away from it with a very warped viewpoint, and when you encounter those who do have a solid background in acoustics and the history of music theory you will embarrass yourself badly.
Book Description
The demands of tuning and temperament have challenged musicians from the earliest civilizations onward. This guide surveys these problems, devoting a chapter to each principal theory and offering a complete history of tuning and temperament. Requires minimal background in music theory. This new reissue is currently the only edition in print. Includes 9 figures and 180 tables.
Customer Reviews:
Dover noticed my review?.......2003-10-24
Someone from Dover obviously noticed my review. They're planning to reprint Barbour's book in paperback in March 2004. Great value for the planned price!
A standard work, it should be reprinted.......2000-05-22
This book is a standard source on scales and temeraments, and their history. It compares and contrasts Pythagorean tuning, just intonation, meantone, irregular temperaments, and finally equal temperament. Barbour displays a strong predisposition towards twelve tone equal temperament in this work, and interprets the history of scales and temperaments as an inexorable march towards equal temperament.
If you are a publishing company looking for something to reprint, this is a classic.
Amazon.com
Involving mathematics, philosophy, aesthetics, religion, politics, and physics, Stuart Isacoff 's Temperament invokes the tone of a James Burke documentary. However, the focus is not on a modern invention, but rather a modern convention: that of tuning keyboards so that every key is equally in tune--and equally out of tune.
With the existing literature tending to bog down in mathematical theory or historical tuning methods, Isacoff bravely attempts to make this seemingly arcane topic interesting to the general reader. He distills the mathematics and music theory into their simplest essences, and draws apt analogies from the everyday. He also generously peppers the text with the quirks and escapades of its more flamboyant central characters; the relevance of the information is often tenuous at best, but Isacoff has obviously done his homework, and he can be forgiven some frivolity.
Less forgivable is his neglect of "well-temperament." Namesake of Bach's masterful collection of 24 pieces (one each in all the major and minor keys), the well-tempered keyboard liberated composers from the howl of badly tuned keys in the way equal temperament did, while preserving the distinct quality of each key. It was a pragmatic and aesthetically rich solution that captivated composers and theorists for decades. Yet Isacoff reserves less than two pages for its description. (Perhaps he deliberately overlooked the topic since it doesn't fit well with his casting of equal temperament's opponents as rigid, dogmatic, and impractical.)
Despite its flaws, Temperament is an accessible guide to a fascinating topic seldom discussed outside musical circles. Though the book may not invigorate hard-core theorists, the amateur musician, armchair scientist, history buff, or plain old curious can glean plenty from it. The advent of digital keyboards--some of which can be tuned to historical temperaments at the flip of a switch--makes this an ideal time for the topic to be rejuvenated. --Todd Gehman
Book Description
Few music lovers realize that the arrangement of notes on today’s pianos was once regarded as a crime against God and nature, or that such legendary thinkers as Pythagoras, Plato, da Vinci, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Newton and Rousseau played a role in the controversy. Indeed, from the time of the Ancient Greeks through the eras of Renaissance scientists and Enlightenment philosophers, the relationship between the notes of the musical scale was seen as a key to the very nature of the universe.
In this engaging and accessible account, Stuart Isacoff leads us through the battles over that scale, placing them in the context of quarrels in the worlds of art, philosophy, religion, politics and science. The contentious adoption of the modern tuning system known as equal temperament called into question beliefs that had lasted nearly two millenia–and also made possible the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, and all who followed. Filled with original insights, fascinating anecdotes, and portraits of some of the greatest geniuses of all time,
Temperament is that rare book that will delight the novice and expert alike.
Customer Reviews:
Listen to tempered instruments instead of reading about it.......2007-03-12
I was quite impressed the first time I read Temperament. How Music became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization by Stuart Isacoff, which is the same book as Temperament: The Idea That Solved Music's Greatest Riddle. I had a the time some theoretical knowledge about temperaments and effects on music playing but I didn't had any chance to experience it until recently.
A friend of mine showed me few months ago a recording called Six Degrees of Tonality. A Well Tempered Piano issued on Gasparo (GSCD-344). I liked so much what I heard that I ordered a second recording available on the same label and called Beethoven In The Temperaments. Historical Tunings on the Modern Concert Grand (GSCD-332). These recordings made by Ed. Foote (see review Not so fast, please., January 2, 2002)are a unique chance to experience other tunings than the widely spread equal temperament.
Returning recently to Isacoff's Temperament after reading L'Histoire de l'Acoustique Musicale by Serge Donval, I realised that the author just wanted to justify historically how and why ET is "THE" temperament that the world has been seeking for over thousand of years.
I invite readers of Temperament to listen to the four Piano Sonatas played on a Steinway D on Beethoven In The Temperaments (two tuned after Prinz and two after Young temperaments) and to compare with any other recordings performed on ET piano.
They will hear how Key Colors used to sound and how triads and chords sound so differently. Listening to the same works on a ET piano make it an uncomfortable experience even if the performer's name is Arrau, Serkin or Pollini.
My wish would be that Mr. Foote and Gasparo come up with more recordings of Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt on a period tempered piano.
Fascinating, Yet Flawed.......2006-04-18
Temperament, by Stuart Isacoff, is almost a great book. It covers a little-known aspect of music history in great depth and with delightful insights and cute 'asides.' In short, it takes a technical subject that is over the heads of most readers and makes it accessible and interesting-- and in the process of course brings it down to a level that the average person can almost understand.
And there's where it fails.
Without audio examples to illustrate the points being made, most of the niceties of the different kinds of scale tuning throughout history are just so much description. Unless you've *heard* the type of tuning known as 'just tuning,' you really can have no idea how strange and sometimes beautiful and sometimes alarming the sounds can be, particularly the effects that familiar harmonies can have when tweaked away from our usual experience in this way. There is a website referred to in the book where you can go and listen to some of these things, but that's just not good enough. The book cries out for an audio CD to be included, with examples tied to specific points in the text, and vice versa. I'm sure the author would have been glad to do it. The publisher goofed.
The other problem in the book is that the author occasionally comes up with a 'fact' which is simply not the case. This is rare, but the fact that it happens at all is cause to wonder about the truth of some of the allegations that he makes. The book isn't scholarly [thank God] and there are no footnotes to use in checking the author's data, but I have a funny feeling that he has played a bit fast and loose with us on some points. No evidence-- just a feeling.
Still-- the book is well worth reading, particularly if you have enough musical background to be able to appreciate some of the author's stories and examples. The tales about politics, philosophy, and personalities gone awry would be fascinating even if the information about music weren't compelling-- which it is.
An entertaining read.......2005-12-15
A good superficial read on the historical development of 12 tone equal temperament. For a more in-depth and analytical look at temperament I would recommend Harry Partch's Genesis of a Music.
A word of warning, this book is available under 2 titles. Temperament - the idea that solved music's greatest riddle, and Temperament - how music became a battleground for the great minds of western civilization. I purchased both assuming that they were companion works, but they are identical.
AN Essential Book for Pianists.......2005-09-06
Stuart Isacoff is a serious pianist and scholar, and his book, Temperament, answers the mysterious questions that those of us who are also serious pianists wish to know and probe. His book is dense with information, but at the same time accessible and clear, so that the pianist who is curious about her instrument and its place in cultural history is enriched with new understanding for the metamorphoses that have produced our modern piano. I am grateful for his impressive research and the deep insights between its covers. Carol Montparker, pianist and author
Not quite what I was looking for........2005-08-27
This book contains some very good and entertaining history, but it doesn't have much physics and/or mathematics of the 12 tone scale and/or its precedents. If you are interested in the history of the development of the various scales however, I think you will find it very interesting. I was looking for something a little more technical in nature. for technical discussions of the subject, I recommend, "On the Sensation of Tone" by Hermann Helmholtz.
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Tuning: Containing the Perfection of Eighteenth-Century Temperament, the Lost Art of Nineteenth-Century Temperment and the Science of Equal Temperme
Owen H. Jorgensen
Manufacturer: Michigan State Univ Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0870132903 |
Customer Reviews:
Temper, temper..........2003-05-16
This absolutely enormous book is one of the classics on musical temperament; for some reason most such books are out of print and hard to get hold of, and this is no exception. The title has got cut off in the Amazon entry - the full title is: "Tuning: Containing the Perfection of Eighteenth-Century Temperament, the Lost Art of Nineteenth-Century Temperment and the Science of Equal Temperment, Complete with Instructions for Aural and Electronic Tuning." It is a mixture of history of tunings and temperaments, and explicit tuning instructions for various temperaments. An interesting thread running through the book is a detailed argument to the effect that equal temperament was not commonplace until the twentieth century.
If you're interested in this book, you might want to get hold of the recordings by Enid Katahn, "Six degrees of Tonality" and "Beethoven in the Temperaments." The former consists of recordings of a number of pieces from different periods of musical history, played on a piano tuned by Edward Foote in temperaments appropriate to the era. Also included are three different takes of the Mozart Fantasie Kv.397 in meantone, "Prelleur" temperament and equal temperament.
Other books you might want to check out are Barbour's "Tuning and Temperament" and Dominique Devie's "Le Tempérament Musical."
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A Guide to Musical Temperament
Thomas Donahue
Manufacturer: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
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Tuning and Temperament: A Historical Survey
ASIN: 0810854384 |
Book Description
On keyboard instruments, tuning pure fifth intervals causes octaves to be out-of-tune. A temperament is a system of tuning in which the tuning of the fifths is altered to keep the octaves in-tune, and to allow all notes of the musical scale to be usable.
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- great for tuners and non-tuners alike
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The Seventh Dragon: The Riddle of Equal Temperament
Anita, T. Sullivan
Manufacturer: Unlimited Publishing
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1588321312 |
Book Description
A veteran piano tuner presents a non-technical, literary view of the quixotic tuning system used on keyboard instruments for hundreds of years. Winner of the Western States Book Award for creative non-fiction in 1986, newly updated with illustrations, index, bibliography.
Customer Reviews:
great for tuners and non-tuners alike.......2006-07-29
I honestly have not completed reading this book, but less than halfway through it I think it's really made an impact on me. It's a really great run-down of what tuning a piano really is, written in terms that non-tuners and non-pianists can actually understand. However, from a tuner's standpoint, it really inspires one to step back and take pause and appreciate one's own profession and craft for once. It is so easy to get into a rut and take for granted what exactly you are doing when you are tuning pianos every day. And that rut can lead to burnout, and sloppy work. Anita Sullivan's words shine a different light on things, and inspire tuners to feel out the art of their craft again.
Supposedly, the book also serves as sort of a philosophical metaphor for life in general as well, but frankly I am still reading "on the surface" as it were.
Good Stuff!
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History of Performing Pitch: The Story of "A"
Bruce Haynes
Manufacturer: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
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The End of Early Music: A Period Performer's History of Music for the Twenty-First Century
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Playing with History: The Historical Approach to Musical Performance (Musical Performance and Reception)
ASIN: 0810841851 |
Book Description
This is the first complete survey of the historical pitch standards used by musicians during the last four centuries. Written from a practical perspective and addressed to performers it is the first book to attach frequency values to pitch names and describe where, when, and why various historical pitch levels were used. It surveys a period from the 16th century to the present and focuses on Italy, France, Germany, the northern and southern Netherlands, and the Habsburg Lands, following the developments in the design and function of instruments and how they influenced and were influenced by pitch changes.
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The Musical Temperament: Psychology and Personality of Musicians
Anthony E. Kemp
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0198523629 |
Book Description
In their attempts to understand the nature of musicianship, music psychologists have generally focused their attention on cognitive processes and abilities. Although a kind of folklore has long existed in musical circles relating to personality differences between players of different instruments, this is the first book to examine the impact of personality and temperament on musicianship. After an introductory chapter which summarizes the relevant personality theories, the book deals with each fact of the musicians' personality in turn: introversion, independence, sensitivity, anxiety, and gender issues. Different forms of musicianship (such as orchestral playing, singing and conducting) are considered next, to clarify the ways in which specific skills impact upon personality development or predispose a person towards different instruments and styles of performance.
Book Description
Tuning In: Microtonality, Alternate Scales And Temperaments For Electronic Musical Instruments. This is the first book available describing the use of microtonality with today's electronic musical instruments. It explores the notes 'in the cracks,' discusses uses of alternate tunings, and reveals the history of scales throughout the world. Tuning In presents tuning data for various Western, ethnic, and other alternate scales and also explains how to use microtonality on synthesizers such as the DX7II, TX81Z, Prophet 5, and any computer with an internal sound generator. This book also shows how to use alternate tunings in performance and studio applications such as sequencing and multitrack recording.
Customer Reviews:
Nice, but beware the tables.......2001-09-17
This book is a great introduction to scales and temperaments for the synthesist. But beware the tables of intervals in cents - there are quite a few entries which are very inaccurate. This applies particularly to the tables for Werckmeister III and the Vallotti-Young temperament. My recommendation to the author is to bring out a second corrected edition, also updating the information on microtonal capabilities of synthesizers.
Best introduction to microtonal music and consonance theory........1998-02-07
A wealth of microtonal music theory is presented in a friendly and easy to understand format. There are sections on acoustics, psycoacoustics, scale theory, scale history, and a list of synthesyzers and their microtonal capabilities. Over 20 different scales are spelled out in cents, ratios, and key mappings for synthesyzers. You don't have to be an electronic musician to benefit from this book. It's also a perfect introduction to Helmholtz's "On the Sensations of Tone". 120 pages.
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