Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.91 (729 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0375703306 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-06-03 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Specifically addresses the HISTORY of tuning and temperament Timothy R. Darrough A great book, but understand what it is before you buy it. It addresses the HISTORY of temperament and tuning, not temperament itself. Specifically, it focuses on how an understanding of tuning and temperament followed the growth of intellectual development in western civilization. The author does not explain the details of historic temperaments and tuning. If your interest is about historic temperaments themselves, you will be disappointed.The authors writing style is good. He writes in a story telling fashion, has a sense of plot and a number of points of climax, which really helps to keep the readers interest. There is no prerequisit. "A music student's positive review" according to A. R.. It's been about four years since I read this book, but I remember that it was an excellent read. I was extremely interested in the material, being ignorant of almost all of it before beginning the book, and I thought it was well-written to boot. Isacoff presented the information well-- providing diagrams and pictures where necessary for understanding certain things, such as the mathematical basis for fifths and octaves. He also included a great deal of history surrounding the main argument (the main point of which was whether to retain the perfect fifth or sacrifice it for the perfect octave) and so he therefore included aspects of reli. A Review of Temperament for the Casual Reader William Carpenter Stuart Isacoff's Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization is a good general introduction to the vexing question of how to tune a piano and other keyboard instruments. He does a good job of describing the mathematics behind the problem in a non-technical manner.However perhaps the best parts of the book are where he describes how the questions of musical tunings become part of the history of western civilization. People really cared about this and what it said about the relationship of man to god and how the universe worked. Euclid, Newton, Alchemy, Copernicus, Galileo and other heavyweight
Involving mathematics, philosophy, aesthetics, religion, politics, and physics, Stuart Isacoff 's Temperament invokes the tone of a James Burke documentary. He also generously peppers the text with the quirks and escapades of its more flamboyant central characters; the relevance of the information is often tenuous at best, but Isacoff has obviously done his homework, and he can be forgiven some frivolity. --Todd Gehman. Yet Isacoff reserves less than two pages for its description. With the existing literature tending to bog down in mathematical theory or historical tuning methods, Isacoff bravely attempts to make this seemingly arcane topic interesting to the general reader. Less forgivable is his neglect of "well-temperament." Namesake of Bach's masterful collection of 24 pieces (one each in all the major and minor keys), the well-tempered keyboard liberated composers from the howl of ba
The contentious adoption of the modern tuning system known as equal temperament called into question beliefs that had lasted nearly two millenia–and also made possible the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, and all who followed. Few music lovers realize that the arrangement of notes on today’s pianos was once regarded as a crime against God and nature, or that such legendary thinkers as Pythagoras, Plato, da Vinci, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Newton and Rousseau played a role in the controversy. Filled with original insights, fascinating anecdotes, and portraits of some of the greatest geniuses of all time, Temperament is that rare book that will delight the novice and expert alike.. Indeed, from the time of the Ancient Greeks through the eras of Renaissance scientists and Enlightenment philosophers, the relationship between the notes of the musical scale was seen as a key to the very nature of the universe.In this engaging and accessible account, Stuart Isaco