source file: mills2.txt Date: Tue, 1 Jul 1997 16:24:51 +0200 Subject: RE: Historical Questions From: Manuel.Op.de.Coul@ezh.nl (Manuel Op de Coul) Edward Remler asks > 1) Well Temperament arose in the latter half of the 17th century and > Bach attempted to popularize it circa 1716 with his first WTC. > Presumably the further a piece’s key is removed from C, the stranger it> will sound to the modern ear, but I have never heard the preludes and > fugues played on a well tempered instrument. Does such a recording > exist? You forget that equal temperament is also a well temperament. A tuning is a well temperament when there is no wolf fifth and it can be played in all keys. One precise definition is that there may be no fifths larger than pure and no major thirds smaller than pure. Your presumption does not hold for well temperaments. So, I don't know of any recordings of Das Wohltemperierte Klavier which are not in a well temperament! On the other hand I neither know records which have the tuning specified on the cover, but haven't made a real investigation. There have been interesting discussings on the list before about which tuning Bach would have had in mind. You might want to read those. It started in Sept. 1995. The old digests can be downloaded from the Mills server. I don't have an answer for your 2nd question. > Any information > about the transition to Equal temperament would be of interest to me. There is plenty of information. If you search for the string "temper" in the tuning bibliography then you get a match for most languages that you can narrow down. ftp://ella.mills.edu/ccm/tuning/papers/bib.html Manuel Op de Coul coul@ezh.nl Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 1 Jul 1997 17:50 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA29838; Tue, 1 Jul 1997 17:50:53 +0200 Date: Tue, 1 Jul 1997 17:50:53 +0200 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA29815 Received: (qmail 19062 invoked from network); 1 Jul 1997 15:50:10 -0000 Received: from localhost (HELO ella.mills.edu) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 1 Jul 1997 15:50:10 -0000 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu