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How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony: And Why You Should Care.(Book review)
How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony: And Why You Should Care, by Ross. W. Duffin. W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. (500 5th Ave., New York, NY 10110), 2006. 184 pp. $25.95.
I'm skeptical of people who tell me what I should do, so I was put off by the title of Ross Duffin's book. He preaches that there's nothing natural about equal temperament, or "ET" as he refers to it. This is nothing new, of course. I was taught early on that ET was a system in which all 12 notes were equally out of tune.
Duffin's light, witty writing style belies his impressive academic background in early tuning systems. A clever lesson on tuning systems and their history forms the body of the book. Tuning systems are notoriously difficult to describe without sending readers into spasms of math anxiety, and the author succeeds at explaining the nature and history of tuning systems in a way that makes it possible for any musician to understand. This feature alone makes the book worthwhile.
Duffin makes two important points to support his notion that ET ruined harmony. First, earlier, more flexible tuning systems are based on natural acoustics that sound good to humans. Second, use of alternate tuning systems will produce performances that ...
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Source: HighBeam Research, How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony: And Why You Should Care.(Book...