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Introduction

Tuning historian J Murray Barbour wrote in a 1947 article: "Explanations of the tuning of the
musical scale are usually so full of figures that the non-mathematician shies away from them
in terror. This is unfortunate, for the subject is not only of interest to the musicologist and
theorist, but of immediate and practical concern to the performer." (Barbour, "Bach and the Art
of Temperament", Musical Quarterly 33/1, January 1947)

Tuning also has direct impact on listeners: affecting the expressive powers of the music, and
the resonance and melodic character of the instruments. Let us visit some of the basic
practical matters, without calculations.

We will work our way toward a method of keyboard tuning I believe was notated by Johann
Sebastian Bach. My 2004 hypothesis in that regard is based on both his music and a drawing
by him, in his textbook about musicianship in all keys.

Perspective

There are hundreds of reasonable ways to tune keyboards for the classical repertoire. Their
appropriateness depends on several questions. Do they clarify the music, aiding its beauty and
strengths? Is the tuning historically plausible for the composer's context or known practices?
Does the tuning allow the music, the instruments, and the performers to sound competent - or
better yet, inspired? Is the tuning for all-purpose use (a whole concert or a whole season), or
for some more restricted set of compositions?

Obviously, all this quickly becomes a minefield of historical, practical, and aesthetic issues.
What is a proper balance of musical, antiquarian, and practical priorities as we choose a
method to set up the keyboard for any specific day, or any specific repertoire?

Here is the familiar appearance of a keyboard. See Figure 1.

Figure 1:

As we zigzag through the white and black keys, the notes might look equally spaced, or nearly
so. However, the pitches produced need not be evenly spaced (as most of us are accustomed
to hearing from modern equal temperament on pianos and organs). A keyboard is merely a
set of levers to activate whatever pitches have been programmed into their opposite ends. The
layout can offer additional musical choices, with much music sounding aesthetically "better", if
not all the pitches are required to be equally spaced.

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"Tempering" refers to a bit of impurity that is introduced deliberately into an otherwise

th th
perfectly harmonious interval, such as a 5 or a 4 on the keyboard. The pitches are put
slightly off their expected positions, giving a vibrato-like wobble when both notes are played
together. There is impurity, asymmetry, and subtle variety: if used carefully, all of these
features can strengthen the musical effects and enliven the sound.

It is a principle similar to fashioning objects with metal alloys, deliberately introducing

impurities: the synthesized blend can be designed with a desired hardness, elasticity, strength,
weight, cost, spring, lustre, colour, to be waterproof, etc. - qualities not available
simultaneously in a single pure metal. A careful alloy helps the resulting tool (in our case, a
musical scale instead of a bolt or a spanner) to be more durable and reliable than it would be
with absolutely natural and pure elements.

Why are clever tuning schemes necessary at all, on keyboards? The short answer is: nature
has not provided any definitively obvious way in which all the available material (within a
musical octave) fits most neatly into twelve small packages, to serve all possible musical
needs. If we try to tune everything directly as well as possible, we quickly run into dead-ends
where other note combinations do not sound as good, since they were not given such direct
attention. We must add some careful refinements and deliberate impurities, along the way, for
the final result to work out well.

As Johann Sebastian Bach instructed his son Carl Philipp Emanuel on the topic of combining
musical influences: "Though one style may on the whole be better than another, there is
nevertheless something of particular value in each, and no style is so perfect that it will not
suffer any additions. Through these additions and refinements we have progressed up to this
point, and we shall progress even farther; but this will never come about if we pursue and, so
to say, worship only one style; on the contrary, we must utilize all that is good, no matter
where we may find it." I believe this applies to the structure of musical intonation, as well:
blended styles of scales.

All the notes, and groups of notes, must work together reasonably. The requirements of
harmony and melody are already in some conflict with one another, as to balancing resonant
stasis vs forward motion through the time of a composition. Each individual pitch has
rd rd th
relationships with (at least) the semitone, tone, minor 3 , major 3 , and 5 above it...and
below it. All is delicate balance: the resulting set of pitches must sound musically satisfying
(and, one hopes, also historically plausible) for whatever music is to be played on the
instrument.

Bach's Drawing

When a musician has a nicely workable layout, it is convenient if it can be reproduced again on
other occasions. I have hypothesized that Johann Sebastian Bach himself had at least one
practical solution that was regularly usable...and that he wrote it down on the title page of his
music most concerned with issues of tuning: his main personal copy of the Well-Tempered
Clavier, containing exemplary music in all 24 keys. As a textbook for teaching Bach's Leipzig
students and his own children, the WTC probes the musical effects and playing techniques of
all the major and minor scales.

Figure 2:

The oddly asymmetric line drawing at the top of that page looks suspiciously like a carefully-
proportioned diagram. Its irregularity suggests that it is meaningful, and not merely an
unbalanced decoration. See Figure 2. Some others before me, and since, have suggested that
this Bach drawing indicates something else (decorative, mathematical, musical, or otherwise).
Perhaps it conveys no measurable information that is reliable enough for some people's own
epistemology; or perhaps it was only fanciful for Bach's own amusement.

Or perhaps, as I believe, the drawing is a direct depiction of Bach's keyboard-tuning method.

It supplies the minimum amount of sufficient information to set twelve appropriately adjusted
notes to "well-tempered" taste...if one knows how to read it properly! That secret may have

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died with him - if there ever was one. But, we can make reasonable guesses at an appropriate
harmonic/melodic balance: using as corroborative evidence the historical context plus the
sound and expressive range of Bach's music.

Any meaningful interpretation of the drawing must fit into musical taste and the behavior of
the appropriate instruments, in practice. We must deliver performances, improvisations, and
compositions of satisfying music. With various arguments presented to interpret Bach's clues,
or to decide what constitutes evidence at all, we must never lose sight of the main goal: which
is to catalyze the production of beautiful music.

Tuning Process

Let us now work out a specific tuning process from Bach's drawing. My temperament layout
derived from this is a very simple sequence, working hands-on at a harpsichord. This method
takes only a few minutes, by ear. The drawing suggests both the strategy of working on the
notes, and the relative amounts of tempering necessary along the way. The crucial listening
process is to sense how much of a deliberate spice or wobble is being added to an otherwise
th th
pure 5 or 4 , by knocking one of the interval's two notes slightly out of tune.

ths
A general principle: when we tune seven notes in sequence by 5 (or by going the opposite
th
direction by a 4 ), those seven notes give us a complete major scale. Fa-Do-Sol-Re-
ths
La-Mi-Ti gives us all the notes connected by 5 , and in conventional scale order this is
Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti[-Do]. This basic structure of diatonic scales is explained fully in
Easley Blackwood's book; see the "Further resources" below.

For all seven notes of the diatonic scale to be generated by 5ths

(and not diminished 5ths or augmented 5ths!), we must start
on Fa=0, Do=1, Sol=2, Re=3, La=4, Mi=5, Ti=6.

In C major, this sequence is F-C-G-D-A-E-B as the

0-1-2-3-4-5-6, or Fa-Do-Sol-Re-La-Mi-Ti. The notes may go
up by a 5th and/or down by a 4th, if we want to stay within a
single octave. Also notice that Ti (6=end) does not connect back
to Fa (0=beginning), as that would form a diminished 5th or
augmented 4th.

The character of that major scale, in intonation, is determined by how nearly we make those
ths
5 pure as we go along. They might be tuned exactly pure, or slightly tempered either
narrow or (less commonly) wide. The notes La, Mi, and Ti are especially open to tasteful
adjustment, occurring near the end of the sequence: by the time they are generated, we can
hear how they fit into the scale both melodically and harmonically, and make any slight
alterations that seem prudent.

Most harpsichord temperaments are generated by some simple set of rules for this process:
ths
describing the tasteful character of those pure or tempered 5 . The easiest rule is to make all
ths
those 5 the same size as one another (see the Reference discussion of "meantone", below).
In the case of Bach's tuning style, I believe he has drawn a simple picture of those rules to
ths/ ths
adjust the 5 4 , using a careful variety of three sizes.

With regard to Bach's drawing, I take another of my conceptual models from the physical
process of tuning a harpsichord: from the tuning-pin's position where an interval is sounding
as pure, how many units of slightest nudge on the tuning lever does it take to rotate the pin,
to deliver the appropriate impurity? One micro-nudge, two, or none (leaving the interval
pure)? This practical business of nudging the rotation is all there is to it, once one knows the
appropriate pattern of which notes to nudge and by how much. Each nudge causes an
increased "twang" in the interval's quality, on very close listening.

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Figure 3:

We establish all of the keyboard's natural notes first (the white notes on pianos or most organs
- obtaining the C major scale of C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C; Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Ti-Do), and then
proceed to the sharps/flats to finish. The C major scale uses the common practice of medium
ths th
tempering on the 5 F-C-G-D-A-E, with a consistent size: two nudges from pure. Each 5 in
rds
turn (F-C, C-G, etc.) is made slightly too small, and this helps the quality of major 3 (F-A,
ths
C-E, etc.) when they result from the several tempered 5 in succession (F-C-G-D-A).

The exceptional step is the last one, E-B. The loop between them has no nudges in it, and I
th
believe this indicates a pure 5 . We have tuned Fa-Do-Sol-Re-La-Mi-Ti (F-C-G-D-A-E-B);
and that last step of the pure E-B (generating Ti) makes that note B a slight bit higher in
pitch, which helps it to serve well as a "leading tone" upward to Do. The C major notes were
derived with consistent tempering on all the intervals F-C-G-D-A-E. This is true not only for
th
this Bach layout, but for all the common "meantone" schemes back into the 17 century and
earlier: regularity and consistency as a base, at least within the natural notes.

Instead of continuing into the sharps/flats with that same "two nudges" consistency off both
ends, our aim here is to make them tastefully irregular in a way that improves their utility.
This is "modified meantone" (see the Reference section, below) or "ordinary" practice, from
th
the 17 century forward: to preserve as much illusion of regularity as possible, while making
additional scales sound beautiful beyond those with two sharps or flats in the key signature.
Such temperaments allow keyboards to be played in all or most keys, without extreme
dissonance, and providing interesting variety among the scales and chords. The farther these
th
systems evolved in both practice and theory, into the 18 century with dozens of examples,
adjustments began to affect the naturals as well. Some of these increasingly irregular systems
are occasionally described today as "well-temperament," but that is a modern (and
ungrammatical!) term, turning Bach's adjective "Wohltemperirte" into a noun.

With the notes of C major already installed, it remains for us to find a source for the five
accidentals. These are the keyboard's raised notes, usually black by contrasting color - and
these notes can be found most conveniently in the B major scale, B-C#-D#-E-F#-G#-A#-B.
ths
The notes when arranged by 5 (Fa-Do-Sol-etc.) are the sequence E-B-F#-C#-G#-D#-A#.

The same way that we took the first half of the diagram for the seven notes of C major, we
take the other half to generate B major. These two scales have the notes E and B in common.
E is "Mi" of C major and "Fa" of B major; B is "Ti" of C major and "Do" of B major.

C major:

Again in the tuning sequence, by 5ths and/or 4ths: Fa=0,

Do=1, Sol=2, Re=3, La=4, Mi=5, Ti=6.

B major:

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In B major, this sequence is E-B-F#-C#-G#-D#-A# as the

0-1-2-3-4-5-6, or Fa-Do-Sol-Re-La-Mi-Ti.

ths
The Bach diagram, continuing where we stopped before, gives us three plain loops (pure 5 )
for E-B-F#-C#, and then three single-nudge loops for the remaining C#-G#-D#-A#. Our start
ths
with several pure 5 gives the B major a "Pythagorean" character (see the Reference section,
below), but then the notes G# (La), D# (Mi), and A# (Ti) each get a tasteful downward
adjustment that removes some of their bright edginess. E-B-F#-C#-G#-D#-A#; Fa-Do-
Sol-Re-La-Mi-Ti...where the concluding La-Mi-Ti have been slightly altered.

We now have generated all twelve notes that we need to play music on this "well-tempered"
keyboard. Like the whole book of Das Wohltemperirte Clavier, the music starts with the
rudiments in the C major scale and it ends in B, giving us a play through everything else in
between. Both the C major scale and the B major scale have been generated by a series of
5ths/4ths: Fa-Do-Sol-Re-La-Mi-Ti, adjusted carefully to taste so everything works out. With
the overlapping of E and B common to both, these two seven-note scales together give us the
complete chromatic scale of all twelve.

ths
In review, our 5 are tempered as follows: F-C-G-D-A-E with the medium amount in common
practice; then E-B-F#-C# pure; then C#-G#-D#-A# tempered with only a light amount, as a
compromising average. The whole line is therefore: F-C-G-D-A-E-B-F#-C#-G#-D#-A#,
typically taking either the C or the A from a tuning fork to start setting up the naturals. Bach's
diagram has given us a map of the appropriately tasteful adjustments. The leftover interval of
th
A# back to F - technically a "diminished 6 " - is not tuned directly; it is very nearly pure
anyway, as a checkpoint that we have not ruined ourselves with cumulative errors. The
complete mapping is shown in Figure 3 (or we could read Figure 2 from right to left).

Figure 3, repeated:

In practice, sitting at the keyboard with our tuning lever and referring to Bach's diagram, this
is much simpler to do than it might appear in all the theoretical explanation above. Just do
this: wherever those "knots" appear inside the loops, make that note slightly lower than it
would sound at the pure position, by nudging the tuning lever counterclockwise to "impurify"
that 5th or 4th deliberately. The picture shows the whole sequence. It takes less than four
minutes, with experience. Some doubly-nudged 5ths, then some pure 5ths, then some singly-
nudged 5ths, and we're done.

All 24 Major/Minor Scales

As a result, all 24 major and minor scales become usable and distinctive, with a smooth
variety passing through all modulations. Each key signature uses some different blend of the
notes borrowed from B major and C major, the two halves of the diagram, sharing the central
loop. If our music needs flats instead of sharps, we simply rename the entire B major scale on
the keyboard: Cb, Db, Eb, Fb, Gb, Ab, Bb, Cb. All twelve notes of the chromatic scale do
double duty, triple duty, and more as they are used within many more scales than merely C
and B majors.

Our scale alloy makes the entire layout thoroughly flexible, and just barely irregular enough
that it holds and renews a listener's attentions. The adjustments are all so subtle that nothing
sounds unduly odd: yet there is enough spice that we avoid the immobilizing blandness of
equal temperament. Risking a metaphysical comment: this temperament makes keyboard

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instruments seem magically alive and alert, in the handling of tonal music.

How does this temperament affect musical practice? Intonation can influence a sensitive
keyboard player's phrasing, dynamics, timing, articulation, and analysis of a composition.
Because all the scales are differently patterned from one another, the ear can pick up clues
each time the music shifts from one scale to another. The irregularities, sensed more as
hardenings or softenings than heard consciously, offer a surprise against expectations. The ear
is drawn to any notes that are coming into the composition from outside the current major or
minor scale of a passage, bringing attention to harmonic modulations as they happen.

This resembles CPE Bach's advice, in his essay about playing keyboard instruments, that the
player should give such foreign tones a bit of extra weight or emphasis, showing off the
surprise. The pattern of dynamic emphasis, due to subtleties of this temperament, matches
musical examples given by both CPE Bach's essay and the flute tutorial by his colleague at
Frederick's court, Johann Joachim Quantz, instructing basso continuo players in tasteful
dynamics. Notes and chords are weighted by the relative amounts of dissonance they are
bringing into the musical texture, the surprise against expectations.

What musical effects emerge from this temperament, in tonal music by the Bachs and others?
C major and F major make the gentlest music, and E major the brightest. The overall sound is
moderate and euphonious, gently melodic and harmonic, while drawing no attention to itself.
It does not make an overwhelming presence, but rather it serves to catalyze beautiful and
natural expression. Different characters are projected with little or no expenditure of effort by
the performer.

At increasing distance from the instrument, anything beyond a meter or two, it simply sounds
almost like equal temperament: always smooth. It would have sounded especially so to people
who grew up in a meantone-based musical environment. It keeps meantone's relaxed,
resonant effect of purity, while eliminating all the remarkably dissonant dead-ends of the
exotic keys. Music seems in tune, and magically unproblematic, all the time.

Exploration

For those who wish to explore these ideas further: the full scholarly version of this is available
in Early Music (Oxford University Press) February-May 2005, and online at <www.larips.com>
with the more recent news items.

This temperament's usage today

Five new CD releases during the first months of 2006 use this special keyboard tuning system,
which may have been Johann Sebastian Bach's own.

"A Joy Forever: Opus 41 at Goshen College" - Bradley Lehman, organ, Taylor & Boody
instrument in northern Indiana, USA, completed 2005. Various repertoire by Bach,
Fischer, Brahms, Böhm, Walther, et al., including the complete book Ariadne musica
(1715) by Fischer. LaripS 1002: Three-disc set. Available through
<www.gcmusiccenter.org> and <www.larips.com>.

"Playing from Bach's Fancy" - Bradley Lehman, harpsichord and organ. Selected
compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach: preludes,
fugues, sinfonias, polonaises, chorale preludes, and more. LaripS 1003:
<www.gcmusiccenter.org> and <www.larips.com>.

Bach: Goldberg Variations BWV 988 and 14 Goldberg Canons BWV 1087 - Richard Egarr,
harpsichord. Harmonia Mundi France 907425-26: Two-disc set.
<www.harmoniamundi.com>.

Anna Magdalena Bach's Book - Elizabeth Anderson, harpsichord and organ; Jacob
Lawrence, boy soprano. Move MD 3304: <www.move.com.au>.

Bach: Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1 - Peter Watchorn, harpsichord and pedal

harpsichord. Musica Omnia MO 0201: Two-disc set. <www.musicaomnia.org>.

Since spring 2004 many other musicians have been exploring this temperament in solo and
ensemble music, and in instrument construction. The first broadcast was a fortepiano recital

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by Robert Hill on Swiss radio, May 2004. The BBC has broadcast ensemble performances by
The English Concert and The Purcell Quartet using this in the basso continuo, and parts of the
new solo CDs mentioned above. In April 2006, Netherlands Radio presented a performance of
Bach's "St Matthew Passion" using this, from a concert series by the Netherlands Bach Society.

Alongside this temperament's use in hundreds of harpsichords, fortepianos, continuo organs,

modern pianos, and synthesizers, it is also installed in instruments that require more hardware
commitment: at least eight larger organs, several fretted clavichords, guitars with microtonal
fingerboards, a bandoneon, and a carillon(!).

Additional adventures of this temperament are listed at <www.larips.com>.

Reference: Other keyboard tuning strategies, historically

ths
Keyboard tuning methods fall historically into several competing styles, as to the size(s) of 5
th
used to generate the notes. All of these styles have been brought back into use in the 20 and
st
21 centuries, for reasons that are variously historical, aesthetic, or practical.

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th ths ths
Pythagorean (before the 17 century): Eleven pure 5 or 4 are easily tuned in
rds ths
succession. The resulting major 3 are very wide. The cycle of 5 does not meet itself
exactly; a dissonance results between the twelfth note and the first note.
th
Just intonation (15 century forward): All the notes are related to one another
ths rds
variously by pure 5 or pure major 3 . The available intervals and chords are
outstandingly resonant within the single home key, but strong dissonances arise in other
keys (thereby restricting modulations). Melodies are bumpy, as the steps within the
scale are of vastly different sizes.
th
Equal temperament (16 century forward, but not a universal "standard" until
ths
the 20th): The same amount of tempering is given to each of the eleven 5 , so the
th
beginning and end meet with a twelfth 5 of the same size. All twelve notes are equally
th
spaced, and all scales have the same character. The tempering of the 5 is so slight that
it is difficult to control with precise equality, in practice.
th
Quasi-equal (18 century forward): These variously subtle methods make a neutral
effect similar to equal temperament's, without a strongly recognizable character to any
key. Some of these are easier to tune than equal temperament, as they have several
ths ths
pure 5 spaced symmetrically among their tempered 5 .
th th
Meantone or "regular" systems (16 -19 centuries): Each tone (whole step) is
rd
placed at an exact mean (geometric average) position within the major 3 , whatever its
size. For example, C-D and D-E are equally spaced within C-E. All of these meantone
ths
systems are generated by tuning eleven identical (regular) 5 of some selected size,
th
until there are twelve different notes. There is a leftover gap, or "wolf" diminished 6 ,
from the twelfth back to the first note; this rift is usually placed at G#-Eb, D#-Bb, or
C#-Ab. Notes such as Db, A#, and E# usually do not exist in this scheme; and they
sound rough if they occur in the music. The most common meantone system had a
th rds
strongly tempered 5 so that the usable major 3 worked out to be pure; but from the
th rds
early 17 century forward this was gradually relaxed toward slightly sharper major 3
ths
and gentler 5 , as practical compromises.
th th
Modified meantone, or "circulating" or "irregular" or "ordinary" (17 -19
ths
centuries): The series of 5 is regular in the midsection (on the natural notes of the C
major scale, ...C-G-D-A-E...), but increasingly wide toward the outsides. This sharpens
the sharps and/or flattens the flats gradually, so they can serve passably as one another,
and it reduces or eliminates the "wolf" intervals. Some of these schemes also have a
flattened F or a raised B, as transition into the flats or sharps.
th
Split keys (15 century forward): Extra key-levers are added within the octave, e.g.,
having two separate keys to play G# and Ab. Such keyboards are usually tuned in a
rds
meantone style, taking advantage of excellent major 3 .

Further resources

Ledbetter, David: Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier: The 48 Preludes and Fugues. Yale
University Press, 2002, 352 pages. See especially chapter 2, "Well-tempered", pp.
35-50. An excellent 16-page presentation of the historical and practical issues in Bach's
milieu.

Devie, Dominique: Le Tempérament musical: Philosophie, histoire, théorie et pratique.

Société de musicologie du Languedoc, Béziers, 1990, 540 pages. [in French] A
comprehensive history of temperament styles, well-illustrated with hundreds of
examples.

Lindley, Mark: "Stimmung und Temperatur", Hören, messen und rechnen in der frühen
Neuzeit, Frieder Zaminer (ed.), vol. 6 of Geschichte der Musiktheorie, Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1987, pp. 109-331. [in German] Another comprehensive
history.

Lindley, Mark: "A Quest for Bach's Ideal Style of Organ Temperament", Stimmungen in

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17. und 18. Jahrhunderts: Blankenburg, Harz, 1994, pp. 45-67. Algebraic theory to
derive Bach's presumed preferences, by averaging and modifying other systems in his
milieu.

Lindley, Mark: "J.S. Bachs Klavierstimmung", Alte Musik als ästhetische Gegenwart:
Bach, Händel, Schütz: Stuttgart 1985 vol. 1, Bärenreiter, Kassel, 1987, pp. 409-421.
English translation "J.S. Bach's Tunings", The Musical Times vol. 126 no. 1714,
December 1985, pp. 721-726.

Blackwood, Easley: The Structure of Recognizable Diatonic Tunings. Princeton University

Press, Princeton NJ, 1985, 318 pages. A thorough set of mathematical theorems
concerning scale structure.

Barbour, J Murray: Tuning and Temperament: A Historical Survey. Michigan State

College Press, East Lansing, 1951. Reprint Da Capo Press, New York, 1973, 228 pages.
Reprint Dover, New York, 2004. A classic and widely-used reference, written as Barbour's
dissertation in 1932; watch out for a number of typographical errors in his tables.

Barbour, J Murray: "Bach and the 'Art of Temperament'", Musical Quarterly vol. 33 no. 1,
Nauray, 1947, pp. 64-89. Also in Garland Library of HWM vol. 6, 1985, pp. 2-27.

Steblin, Rita: A history of key characteristics in the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. 1981. Reprint University of Rochester Press, Rochester NY, 1996, 396 pages.
See especially the Second Edition, 2002. ISBN: 1-58046-041-0. Comprehensive study of
literature and theory, about the reported effects of different musical keys.

Norrback, Johan: 'A Passable and Good Temperament' - A New Methodology for
Studying Tuning and Temperament in Organ Music. PhD diss., Göteborg University,
September 2002, 166 pages. GOArt Publications, Göteborg, 2002.

Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel: Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen, Berlin,
1753 and several later editions. An inexpensive reprint is available from Breitkopf,
1958/1992, edited by Lothar Hoffmann-Erbrecht. The standard English translation of this
book is by William J Mitchell, Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments.
New York: Norton, 1949. I believe that CPE Bach had the same career temperament as
his father's, or very close to it, in his ordinary use: details of that hypothesis are here.

Lehman, Bradley: articles "Bach's extraordinary temperament: Our Rosetta Stone"

(2004-5) and "The 'Bach Temperament' and the Clavichord" (2005), and the additional
citations within both of those

Frequently Asked Questions answered at LaripS.com

Informal speech about these tuning concepts

Summary of the most common "meantone" (regular) temperaments

Remarks about the strategy of "ordinary" (or "irregular" or "modified meantone" or

"circulating") temperaments

Other recordings in this temperament, by various people

Video demonstrations

Lecture notes from October 2008

Lecture notes from October 2010, University of Colorado

This is the full-length original version of this article; a shortened feature drawn
from it appears in the BBC Music Magazine, August 2006 (Vol 14, #13), pages
42-44.

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