source file: mills2.txt
Date:         Sat, 16 Sep 1995 12:51:26 -0500

Subject:      Re: Froberger and temperaments

From:         mcgeary thomas nelson <mcgeary@UX1.CSO.UIUC.EDU>

Regarding temperaments/tuning for Purcell.  First, I would suggest there
is no basis for using Young or Barnes-Bach.  Young is too late by 100
years, and Barnes-Bach is a fictional fabrication for which there is
no historical basis (see Rudoph Rasch's article on does well temperament
mean equal temperament, in Peter William's "Bach, Handel, Scarlatti").

There seem to be a lot of different temperaments being advocated in
the early 1/2 of the 18th-cent. in Britain.  The earliest I knowof
if given in Godrey Keller's "Rules for tuning the Harpsichord or
Spinett" in his A Compleat Method for ... Thorough Bass" (1707). It's
rules are the typically vague regular temperament whose 3rds and 5ths were
respectively "as sharp" and as flat as the ear will permit." It most
likely would be a temperament approaching 1/5- or 1/6-comma meantone.

Other temperaments mentioned in the early half of the century include
strict meantone, Pythagorean, and modifications of them. Further details
can be found in "Early Eighteenth-Century English Harpsichord Tuning and
Stringing" in "The English Harpsichord Magazine, vol. 3, no. 2 (1982),
pp. 18-22.

tom mcgeary