source file: mills2.txt Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 17:16:44 +0200 Subject: Historical temperaments From: Daniel Wolf If we restrict ourselves to Mozart, he probably used a lot of meantone during his career - the church organs in Salzburg were apparently in still meantone (whether 1/5 or 1/4 comma, I cannot be sure), and he did not compose for fretted instruments - the only instruments of the era most definitely in equal temperament (whereas Haydn left behin a huge repertoire of music for Baryton). In all probability, composers of the era were confronted with wildly varied tunings, and restriction to the ''good'' meantone keys was a safe decision. Instruments of fixed pitch continued to be made in meantone well into thenineteenth century. English harmoniums were usually in meantone, the concertina described in Berlioz's _Instrumentation_ (1844) is in meantone. Ellis indicates a gradual introduction of 12tet over the nineteenth century, replacing a meantone, where the g# was adjusted somewhat. Ellis also makes it clear that the piano was in 12tet first (Ellis disputes Broadwood'c claim for 1811 and argues for a date around 1844), followed by the organ (first in 1854, but in large numbers not until the 1880s), and then the harmonium. Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 03:17 +0200 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA28376; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 00:17:31 +0200 Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 23:44:19 +0200 Message-Id: Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu