Temper, Temper!

When Alfred A. Knopf published my book, Temperament, in late 2001, the last thing I expected was a political response. The book traces the evolution of an argument that began as far back as the 5th century B.C., and that found temporary respite only in the 20th century, over whether God had decreed which notes should comprise the musical scale. Because my approach places this debate in the context of developments in art, science, philosophy, and religion, Temperament is filled with the stuff of human discord, and includes such notable combatants as Galileo, Leonardo, Newton, Descartes, and Rousseau. However, in putting this history out into the world, I hardly expected to find myself in the center of a storm -- under attack from the Left and praised by the Right.

Who would have guessed that while The Economist would call my work "an immensely entertaining, original and informative book," and that Sarah Maserati in these pages would describe it as "thrilling," and "a whirlwind tour through the history of Western culture, told with flair and grace," Time Out New York would find it "narrow-minded" and "riding high on Western self-congratulation." The Village Voice declared that I was a champion of the (misguided) status quo, which finds "a particularly warm welcome in today's America." Further, were it not for my role as a puppet of establishment forces, contended Voice critic Kyle Gann -- in a review filled with musical points that were by turns incorrect or irrelevant -- I "probably would have had to settle for a much smaller publisher." What was going on?

With the release in February of the paperback edition by Vintage Books, I had an opportunity to ponder, and respond to, some of these criticisms. Truth to tell, I was puzzled at first. At what point in the course of my narrative had I become the ugly American, narrow-mindedly believing in Western superiority? As a 30-year student of Tai Chi Chuan and Taoism, I assumed readers would sense my love of Chinese culture in the chapter on ancient China. If not, I thought, at least no one could believe I was belittling its venerable traditions. (Certainly my Chinese and Japanese publishers sensed no such bias.) True, I focused on Western music and culture. But that's because my topic -- musical temperament -- is a Western phenomenon. There was really no reason to write about the music of other lands.

However, it slowly dawned that something more ominous was afoot: the tendency in our "postmodern" environment to react with hostility toward any celebrations of Western achievement. In a recent essay for Early Music America, pianist Steven Lubin wrote of postmodernism's sense "that Euro-American culture is morally tainted and guilty of arrogance and oppression," and described its penchant for "deconstructing" texts to find their hidden agendas. "With all this dissecting comes an inevitable debunking: Icons topple. Plato gets a special share of blame. . . . The Enlightenment too is particularly ripe for bashing for its excessive trust in reasoning, reason now being understood as inherently a distorter of ...