>I have been hiding behind my ignorance for a bit on this thread - I don't
> understand the usage of the term "comma" (I hope I am not alone in this)
>
> I have found this all enlightening and instructive.  I have been wondering
> however why there have been so many temperaments developed over time. 
> This
> would explain why Bach sounds good on some organs and not on others.  Does
> anyone have an idea of the temperaments of his organs?  I know he played 
> on
> a number of them and am wondering if this may have had an influence on his
> writing.

What good questions! I, for one, feel this discussion is an important one. 
Rather than banning it, it should be encouraged, with good questions and 
informed answers--an as much as possible an avoidance of knee-jerk, 
uninformed reaction. I wouldn't go so far as to say only those who know how 
to tune should enter the discussion however. This is how we learn, and one 
would hope that a forum such as this would allow us to continue growing 
after our years of lessons or music school.

While some would say that changes in temperament over time were a 
development or improvement which ultimately ended in equal temperament, this 
is clearly not true if one reads historical documents. Equal temperament was 
known as far back as the Renaissance and even as far back as the ancient 
Greeks, but it was rejected for many hundreds of years because it did not 
serve the purposes of the musical styles currently in use. Temperament and 
musical style have gone hand in hand over the historical eras. It is 
possible to discern the temperament a composer had in mind by analyzing his 
music. I suspected Buxtehude preferred Werckmeister before I actually read 
that he was an enthusiastic supporter of Werckmeister simply through the way 
his harpsichord suites are written.

Unfortunately, if one is sensitive to tuning, one size does not fit all. For 
an organ, this presents a real difficulty as it cannot be retuned all the 
time as a harpsichord can. If I want to practice Sweelinck, I simply tune my 
harpsichord in 1/4 comma meantone. Then if I want to practice Bach, I retune 
in Werckmeister (for earlier pieces) or something similar to Brad Lehman's 
temperament (for WTC or other pieces that seem to want it.) I believe Bach 
himself was dealing with many transitions in musical style, fingering, AND 
TEMPERAMENT. I think he probably developed his own style of tempering later 
in life, that he probably dealt with meantone early in life as well as on 
the many organs that were still tuned in some kind of meantone, that he was 
probably very familiar with Werckmeister through his association with 
Buxtehude. . .and that he eventually developed his own style of tuning. 
Historical evidence through his student Kirnberger and his son CPE Bach 
provide very strong evidence that JS Bach, himself, rejected equal 
temperament because he preferred key colors. However, it is sometimes argued 
that his frequent transposition of pieces argues in favor of equal. I don't 
know about that. When I have the harpsichord tuned in Werckmeister, I will 
try things in other keys just to see how they sound, and why wouldn't he? 
And one of my favorite examples in favor of organs tuned in Werckmeister is 
the F major cadence and exposition in the middle of the Dorian fugue. How 
wonderful that sounds in Werckmeister! (F major is it's best key) and how 
boring it sounds in equal!

So I believe Bach is a complex subject when it comes to temperament. I do 
believe that temperament influenced writing very strongly, and I personally 
feel that different Bach pieces like to be played in different temperaments, 
depending on how they're written. I don't like the WTC in Werckmeister as 
well as other pieces of his. Why do we have to settle on just one single 
"Bach temperament?" As to the question about organs and Bach, I am not aware 
that anyone knows for sure how the organs were tuned that he played on. We 
do know that Silbermann used a mild meantone, but that Bach did not like it. 
Other than that, I don't think we know. I'd bet that he MOSTLY had to play 
on meantone, even if he didn't like it especially. And surely he knew how to 
deal with it, even if he didn't like what he perceived as limitations. 
Perhaps some of the organs were in Werckmeister, and perhaps, even, he had 
some influence on how some of the organs were tuned. . .that's a very good 
question.

But for an organ, again, one does have to settle on one, and that can be 
difficult. I suppose in general I prefer Werckmeister overall, or something 
like Brad Lehman's temperament, but Werckmeister, especially, does not 
handle Franck so well (but it's no worse than hearing Bach in equal. . .) 
The music that gets really butchered is that written for meantone. But if 
one chooses meantone, then that excludes a lot of other music, as Romantic 
music (except British music up til about the mid 19th century) really 
doesn't work. (But again, Anglican chants. . .some of them sound FANTASTIC 
in meantone, as that is what they were intended for! Those problemmatic 
final chords with thirds in the tenor and no fifth . . . they sound great in 
meantone, as they were intended!) Equal temperament does work ok in 
instruments built on slider chests that tend to pull intervals in tune. The 
Tannenberg in Winston-Salem sounds not too bad in equal, but it pulls, as 
does the Round Lake organ--remarkably so at times! The worst sounding 
instruments in equal are electronic instruments (or even DE pipe organs) 
that won't budge an inch!

The choice for an organ really depends on the literature it will be playing, 
for the most part. I don't think this is too objectionable, as for me, just 
as one temperament does not fit all, I have yet to find an organ where one 
tonal approach fits all.

And one needs to really keep in mind that even equal temperament was not 
really equal until the 20th century, for various reasons, not the least of 
which is that even piano tuners would "sweeten" the temperament to favor 
certain keys.

Thomas Dressler

Poconos, PA 

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