Musical Offerings, Fall 2018

72 True ⦁ Intonation and Modulation accomplishment hints at the complete harmonic freedom composers would soon employ. As demonstrated by the WTC, it is possible to tune a keyboard instrument so that it sounds good in any key. However, the easiest and simplest way to do this is through the use of ET. Increases in chromaticism throughout the Classical and Romantic periods called for a tuning system which allows for free modulation, particularly enharmonic modulation. 40 While this does not demand that all instruments use ET, “Equal temperament is the best approximation, on an instrument of fixed intonation, to the flexible intonation implied in enharmonic change.” 41 Even the great music theorist, Rameau changed his opinion about ET after years of work. Rameau had formerly supported irregular temperaments but decided in 1737 that ET was the better system . 42 While ET has its downsides—mainly the extremely sharp major thirds— it met the needs of composers from the Classical period onward. Rameau serves as just one example that growing harmonic trends of extended chromaticism led to the gradual adoption of equal temperament. The various compositions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—from romanticism to atonality—demonstrate the accomplishments of this tuning system. Without ET and the equality it establishes between all pitches, this music could not have been composed. For this reason, after hundreds of years of discussion and hundreds of tuning systems, musicians eventually settled on the ET compromise—equal temperament had nearly limitless potential. Bibliography Barbour, J. Murray. Tuning and Temperament: A Historical Survey. East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1953. Daniels, Arthur. “Microtonality and Mean-Tone Temperament in the Harmonic System of Francisco Salinas.” Journal of Music Theory 9, no. 1 (1965): 2–51. doi : 10.2307/843148 . Donahue, Thomas. A Guide to Musical Temperament. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2005. 40 Duffin, How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony , 36. 41 L. S. Lloyd, Intervals, Scales and Temperaments , 164. 42 Donahue, A Guide to Musical Temperament, 113.