Product Details
Tuning and Temperament: A Historical Survey

Tuning and Temperament: A Historical Survey
By J. Murray Barbour

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Product Description

The demands of tuning and temperament have challenged musicians from the earliest civilizations onward. This guide surveys these problems, devoting a chapter to each principal theory and offering a complete history of tuning and temperament. Requires minimal background in music theory. This new reissue is currently the only edition in print. Includes 9 figures and 180 tables.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #158261 in Books
  • Published on: 2004-05-20
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 240 pages

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Customer Reviews

A standard work, it should be reprinted5
This book is a standard source on scales and temeraments, and their history. It compares and contrasts Pythagorean tuning, just intonation, meantone, irregular temperaments, and finally equal temperament. Barbour displays a strong predisposition towards twelve tone equal temperament in this work, and interprets the history of scales and temperaments as an inexorable march towards equal temperament.

If you are a publishing company looking for something to reprint, this is a classic.

A classic, essential reading if a bit dated4
Thank heavens Dover did this reprint! Barbour's book is essential reading for anyone wanting a comprehensive overview of historical temperaments, from the early Greeks to the twentieth century. That said, Barbour wrote from the vantage point of someone firmly believing that equal temperament is the ultimate expression of temperament, so the reader is left to interpret the contents, absorb what's good and toss out what's not so useful. Barbour cites many sources, so the book makes a decent bibliogrphy for further study. In fact, having read the book the reader should indeed go to the sources and make his own interpretation of the sources.
While this book is essential reading, there are several other contemporary writers on tuning and temperaments. Highly recommended is Mark Lindley's entry on the subject in the New Grove's. For a valuable polemic on temperaments and harmony, read Ross Duffin's recent "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care)", available at Amazon.com.

Dover noticed my review?5
Someone from Dover obviously noticed my review. They're planning to reprint Barbour's book in paperback in March 2004. Great value for the planned price!