Talk:Meantone temperament

Remove everything related to Syntonic Temperament and Dynamic tonality

Maybe about 40% of this article seems to correspond to a fringe theory by user JimPlamondon. This is against wikipedia's philosophy, as you can see here. In the fringe theories page. This has nothing to do with whether I agree or disagree with this theory, it is an objective fact that this is not broadly supported and as such should be deleted. Wikipedia is not a place for promoting your own theories, it should reflect what is broadly acceped in a field, there are many other websites that can be used to promote or support this research.

In a nutshell, as my reference states: To maintain a neutral point of view, an idea that is not broadly supported by scholarship in its field must not be given undue weight. I don't think this deserves extra discussion, and JimPlamondon's own comments on the matter make this very clear. I will procede to delete everything associated with Dynamic Tonality IgnacioPickering (talk) 23:52, 17 July 2021 (UTC) IgnacioPickering (talk) 00:39, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Let me stress, in addition, that there exists a Dynamic tonality article that says all what WP readers might want to know (and even more). A link to that article might prevent further discussions. There also is a Quarter comma meantone article, with which this one at times is redundant. I wonder whether the present article could not be renamed "Meantone temperaments" (plural), leaving details about specific meantones to specific articles. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 09:17, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

The definition of ‘Meantone’

It has become customary to refer to any regular temperament with better thirds than equal temperament as meantone. However, as far as I can tell, this is modern terminology. Contrary to what is often claimed (without clear citations from sources), I am not aware of any historical sources that use this term other than for the 1/4 (syntonic) comma tuning. The historical concept seems to be clearly based on the fact that the whole tone (logarithmically) is the average of the major and minor whole tone from a pure tuning. To base the definition on the fact that a whole tone is half of a major third seems rather pointless to me for two reasons.

First, this terminology does not imply a delineation between temperaments with better thirds than equal temperament (as is meant in common usage). What then is this limitation based on, and why would just this term have come into being for this subset of regular temperaments? Especially as a delineation from the traditional pythagorean tuning, this definition of "meantone" is inadequate!

And second, what does "mean" mean if we don't assume well-defined different whole tones with simple string length ratios? However, these exist only in simple mathematical systems, such as pure tunings (which does not exclude that such intervals can also occur in some temperaments, but there they do not constitute a theoretical basis for the definition of a certain kind of whole tone). Therefore, also linguistically, the term "meantone" does not seem to be the most obvious designation for the notion of a "semi-(major)third".

Since I don't pretend to have read all possibly relevant historical sources, my first question to the other participants in this talk page is therefore: can you provide me with historical sources for the use of the term "meantone" in the currently common sense of a general third-oriented regular temperament?

And if not, shouldn't we make it clear in this article that the definition that in fact includes a whole range of regular temperaments is a modern definition that differs from historical usage?

I have no fundamental problem with unhistorical definitions if they describe a meaningful modern concept. However, we must be aware that the use of a historical term that does not (or worse, only partially) correspond to the historically associated concept has the serious disadvantage of causing confusion. Therefore it should then be clearly communicated. There are enough shaky theories circulating in the early music world that have more to do with the interpretation of some performers than with the sources. If these lead to a good musical result in practice, I have no problem with that. However, we should not ascribe to them a historical authority that they cannot pretend to have.

Koos van de Linde — Preceding unsigned comment added by Niehoff54 (talk • contribs) 11:29, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Meantone temperaments other than the quarter-comma meantone have been documented since the 16th century, even if they may not have been called "meantone". Zarlino mentioned tempering the fifths by 2/7 comma in his Istitutioni harmoniche (1558), chapter 42, pp. 126-127. Salinas describes three methods of obtaining equal tones (vt Toni æquales fiant), namely 1/3 comma, 1/4 comma and 2/7 comma, in De musica, Book III, chapter XV (pp. 143-145). Both call the major third ditonus, which stresses its being made of two [equal] tones. (Ditonus comes from the Greek ditonos, of course, and Pythagoreans in Greek antiquity already were aware that the Pythagorean third also was a ditone.) Several other divisions of the syntonic comma were discussed in the 17th and 18th centuries: 1/5, 2/9, 3/10, 5/18, 1/6, 1/7, 1/8, 1/9 and 1/10, always coming closer to 1/11 (i.e. 1/12 Pythagorean comma) that would produce equal temperament. The authors of these descriptions were aware that these divisions produced major thirds formed of two equal tones. These temperaments may not have been described as "meantone" – determining this would involve a lot of checking. Ellis makes an abundant use of the term in his translation of Helmholtz' Tonempfindungen, but Helmholtz himself never names that temperament. I am not even sure that 1/4 comma meantone ever was so called before the 19th century. What other name would you suggest? — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 14:25, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

@Koos van de Linde, on second reading of your message above, I realize that you worte that you are "not aware of any historical sources that use this term [meantone] other than for the 1/4 (syntonic) comma tuning." If you are aware of historical sources that do use it for 1/4 comma temperament, I'd be genuinely interested. I think to have read that Sauveur did, but was unable to find in Sauveur nor it in his writings (I suppose that the French term would have been ton moyen, nor in any of the French treatises that I have). In German, Mittelton has been used in discussions of enharmonies, or also to denote the third (Mediante) as dividing the fifth in a triad, etc., but not, that I am aware of, for temperaments – neither Helmholtz, nor Riemann, nor Brokhaus, use it in that meaning. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 15:04, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Diagram caption

The caption on the diagram comparing the various temperaments is way too long. If the diagram can't be explained in a few sentences, it's probably not of any value to our readers. Half of the caption is just pointing out various spots on the diagram, which, if they are notable, should be expressed in the diagram itself. I'm going to boldly chop off a huge chunk of the caption and see how that works. Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 00:10, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Major tone and minor tone

The term "major tone" is wikilinked to major second, which does NOT explain what a (just) major tone is: 9/8. In the given context, which explains the term "meantone" as a mean between a major tone and a minor tone (i.e. 10/9), we had better not confuse the readers with the major and minor seconds of scale construction. If there's a Wikipedia entry that explains "major tone" accurately, let's wikilink to that instead. yoyo (talk) 22:01, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Early references inadequately cited

I have added a tag template at the top, asking for further citation details, and a "citation needed" tag to references 9-10, 12-14 which, at present, are too incomplete to be of any use. Could anyone who knows what these references are more precisely please provide them? KarlJacobi (talk) 17:15, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

I have no idea of how to add citation details to these references, I don't master the format of such refs. The works are available on Internet:

• Gafurius, Practica musicae. Milan: Gulielmum signer Rothomagensem, 1496. [1]
• Aron, Thoscanello de la musica. 3/Venice: Marchio Sessa, 1539. [2]
• Zarlino, Le Istitutioni harmoniche. Venice: the author, 1558. [3]
• Salinas, De musica libri septem. Salamanca: Mathias Gastius, 1577. [4]
• Huygens, "Lettre touchant le cycle harmonique". Histoire des Ouvrages des Sçavans (Henri Basnage de Beauval), Rotterdam, October 1691, pp. 78-88. [5]

I let you add the details to the citations. — Hucbald.SaintAmand (talk) 10:19, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I have added the URL links and information about location and publisher. Thanks. KarlJacobi (talk) 22:43, 4 September 2024 (UTC)