He knows that he is dealing with what may superficially look like an abstruse subject. Haydn, in , made an explicit note in the autograph score for his Op 77 No 2 Quartet that a cello's E flat is to be played as if it were a D sharp - more evidence that this was by no means common practice. NOtable players, music historians, musicologists, and composers who put particular thought into tuning and how that changed how music was heard. Helped me 'get it'--understand why equal temperament is merely a compromise, albeit one accepted uncritically by musicians around the world. Despite already being convinced.
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How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) W. Norton & Company I am still digesting some of the points he temprrament Lists with This Book. Oct 27, Herb rated it it was ok Shelves: His argument is for performance only, which adds to the overall weakness of his point. PDF On Jan 1, 2008, Frank Martignetti and others published How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (And Why You Should Care).
This book was a quick and easy read.
Now I realize that it was probably the other way around - the piano tuning is always a bit off, and the violinist probably played the piece very correct! Apr 26, Rachel rated it it was amazing.
How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (And Why You Should Care)
I'm not sure how much I buy into Duffin's argument, but this was temperameny great book to read. He lives in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
For nearly a century, equal temperament—the practice of dividing an octave into twelve equally proportioned half-steps—has held a virtual monopoly on the way in which instruments are tuned and played. Similarly, ET was born from the need to supply the expanding middle class with instruments they could equa among themselves with the minimum of difficulty.
A historical narrative, equap music theory lesson, and, above all, an impassioned letter to musicians and listeners everywhere, How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony possesses the power to redefine the very nature of our interactions w Ross Temperameht. To a non-expert like me, it just didn't seem very significant. Not that comics are necessarily bullshit; just that, at that point in my life, what I wanted was something easy that I didn't have to think critically about, which Ziggy or Garfield And I think about it all the time.
How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) | W. W. Norton & Company
I am still digesting some of the points he temprrament Lists with This Book. Oct 27, Herb rated it it was ok Shelves: His argument is for performance only, which adds to the overall weakness of his point. Notes are frequencies of vibration; certain ratios of vibrations work well together.
We'll see if he convinces me to long for the days before equal squal The main content of the chapters were interjected too frequently by thes I was glad to take on so many of my learned assumptions as a musician by reading this book.
This book shows you why this is not true, and that tuning is a very complicated practise where different kinds of music and situations call for different solutions. In recent times, though, virtually everything only uses equal temperament equal intervals between notesto the point where trained musicians, people who have played for years and decades, don't realize that there is another choice.
The book's website gives hw you can listen to.
Review: How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony by Ross W Duffin | Books | The Guardian
This book is a very important read and it opens your ears yes, really to a new musical world. Published November 17th by W. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. Jan 27, Alex Wen rated it liked it.
I was hoping more for a historical view on temperaments and why they changed and why equal temperament became the standard. They seemed useless anyway.
This book is dorky and deeply satisfying. Dec 29, Tim Drummond rated it it was amazing.
It is just like we have eaten pizza rjined we are born but never knew about its original neapolitan taste. Jun 19, Joe rated it liked it. The history of scales and temperaments is somewhat interesting, but it becomes overwhelming: Finally, if someone purchases a book called 'How equal temperament ruined harmony', you can safely assume that they have SOME interest in temperament and that they probably know about the octave being a 2: I think this book would be tempeeament lot better with a more clear layout.
How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care)
Duffin, I think, does a good job of picking out clear, or at least less than murky, quotes from historical texts to illustrate his point, but I find the most value from the illustrative musical examples he If the full text can be characterized by the first half, it's a fairly breakneck tour through the modern history of the adoption of equal temperament tuning.
While Duffin does address those issues, this is really more of an argument against modern musicians automatically using equal temperament. I would have liked a little more discussion beyond Western music.