>Robert Forbes, Yale University History Department, wrote:
>
>>       I wonder if you can go into this in a bit more detail.
>>I'm not a musician but a historian, and have done some work
>>with Handel............
>
 
Joseph Spencer wrote:
 
............>Which brings us back to Herr Handel.  His harpsichord music
>mostly dates from early in his career, most from before he
>left Germany.  At this early part of the century, the
>temperament question was at its hottest. Werckmeister's
>treatise came out in 1696 (check me, someone), Buxtehude
>had his organs retuned in something like 1702 (again, please). Handel,
>like many other composers of his generation, I'm sure was impatient with
>the restraints the old temperaments placed on him as a composer, and he
>wanted more freedom to move harmonically than they admitted.  That's
>enough to be pretty adamant, if you're walking around with as much
>talent inside as this guy had.
 
 
--------------------------------------------------
 
        I must have mentioned this on a different list, but their does
survive a book of "12 Voluntaries and Fugues with Rules for Tuning" by
Handel.  It was not published until about twenty years after Handel's death
and it is not clear that Handel actually wrote these pieces, but Owen
Jorgensen offers that perhaps the Tuning rules are genuine.  Anyway, the
details of Owen's analysis are in his latest book, and this particular
temperament would seem to support a well-temperament.
 
 
Dennis Johnson
St. Olaf College
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