Tuning Systems for Keyboard Instruments – A Historical Overview
Tuning Systems for Keyboard Instruments – A Historical Overview

Summary/Abstract: The article focuses on analysis and reconstruction of tuning systems from 17th- to 18th-century music on the European space. Tempering is the attempt to reach a compromise between the sound’s natural attributes and the “artificial”, chromatic 12-tone octave system. By tempering we negotiate between the fifth’s and the third’s drive toward purity. Meantone tuning systems must satisfy the requirement that thirds be as close to the natural interval as possible. In the attempt to attenuate the fifth’s narrowness, various divisions of the Syntonic comma were experimented (“French tuning systems”, e.g. Mersenne and Rameau). The requirements of the well-tempered tunings were the possibility to modulate to all tonalities and a differentiation as refined as possible of the expressivity of each tonality, with a slight preference for the closely remoted. Between the two extremes – Werckmeister and Vallotti – there were numerous well-tempered tuning systems based on the various divisions of the Pythagorean comma. Many musicians attempted, in the last decades, to create new tuning systems in the spirit of those well-tempered, with respect to Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, which would at properly highlight the different character of each tonality (e.g. Barnes, Kellner, Lehman).

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