Equal Temperament Tricked Me

When I started this blog, I meant to write more than I’m writing now. I have more free time than I think I do. In other words, I like to pretend that I’m super-busy and not a social recluse when all I really do is play the piano and read books all day. Not that it’s a bad lifestyle. But I am, in fact, akin to a hermit. Meaning, I do have time to put into writing. And it’s beneficial for me.

I just finished reading a book entitled “How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (And Why You Should Care)”. It’s by a man named Ross Duffin. (I feel the uncontrollable urge to point out that Duffin is a pansy name, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about.) He’s an early music scholar of some sort. I think the title of his book is misleading. It makes it sound as if his argument is more forceful than it is. Essentially what he’s saying is that equal temperament is often not the best tuning option, particularly concerning voice, strings, and woodwinds. Rather than arguing against the banishment of equal temperament, he’s arguing against the exclusive use of that particular tuning system. Dr. Duffin wants people to be aware of other options of tuning an instrument. And I agreed with him more than I thought I would.

First, I feel as if I should give a definition for equal temperament. If a musician tunes a piano (for example), starting at C and tuning up in *acoustically pure* fifths, by the time the C is reached again, it’s not really a C. It’s just a bit higher than a C should be. This causes serious problems, obviously. An instrument tuned using equal temperament contains fifths which are slightly smaller than a real fifth. We’re talking quarters of semi-tones. Very minute differences. Of course, this means that the fourths are slightly wider, and the thirds are much, much wider. Our modern ears have become accustomed to this, and it sounds fine to us. Also, it allows for every key signature to be used, and they all sound exactly the same. It has its perks.

What most people don’t know, however, is that ET didn’t become prominent until the 1800s, and permanent until later. This means that Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and even Beethoven, didn’t use ET. And *this* means that their music probably sounded much different than how we hear it today on ET-tuned instruments. I don’t want to go too far into all the different tuning methods which Dr. Duffin discussed. However, I wanted to point out that most of them employed a concept called “extended meantone”. Essentially, a musician using extended meantone differentiates sharps and flats. For example, D-sharp has a different sound than E-flat. The interval from D to D-sharp is smaller than that from D-sharp to E. I hope that makes sense. I’m not sure if this is even possible to do on a keyboard instrument. The author didn’t go into it. But it seems fairly easy for string players, and would certainly produce a different tone than that which today’s audience is used to hearing.

I think it’s an interesting concept. I didn’t know that other tuning systems were ever used. I thought that equal temperament had always been the only way to tune an instrument. Even in my two solid years of music theory at Baylor, it was never brought up. But I think that it’s at least something which people should know about and explore, particularly when dealing with early music.