Why I hate Vallotti – cont.
N othing can diminish the flexibility and utility of Vallotti and Young as keyboard temperaments. They may, in fact, suit your needs precisely. But what I have tried to do here is to show that there may be better choices, especially for Baroque ensemble music, and that the unexamined use of a convenient solution is
not necessarily the best musical path. It’s not Vallotti per se that I “hate”; it’s Vallotti’s ubiquitous use in situations where it is clearly neither the best historical nor the best musical choice.

A NOTE ON THE SOUND EXAMPLES:

The sound examples were produced on a Korg M1 keyboard, down a half step from modern pitch and with temperament approximations set to the nearest whole cent. Neither the whole cent approximations nor the artificial harpsichord sound are ideal for hearing the subtleties of temperaments. I did this merely to ensure that the temperament of the instrument didn’t drift while the examples were being recorded, thus rendering the examples completely useless. I highly recommend tuning these temperaments on your own harpsichord, using either a high quality electronic tuner or, alternatively, the beat–counting method used by many professionals.

Click below to hear performances in each temperament

Sarabande in G Minor

 Prelude No. 1 in C Major

Select Bibliography 

Barbieri, Patrizio. “Violin intonation: a historical survey.” Early Music 19 (1991), 69–88.

Barbour, J. Murray. Tuning and Temperament: a Historical Survey. East Lansing: Michigan State College Press, 1951.

Blackwood, Easley. The Structure of Recognizable Diatonic Tunings. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Haynes, Bruce. “Beyond temperament: non–keyboard intonation in the 17th and 18th centuries.” Early Music 19 (1991), 357–81.

Jones, William. Physiological disquisitions; or, Discourses on the natural philosophy of the elements. London: J. Rivington, 1781.

Jorgensen, Owen. Tuning the historical temperaments by ear: a manual of eighty–nine methods for tuning fifty–one scales on the harpsichord, piano, and other keyboard instruments. Marquette: Northern Michigan University Press, c1977.

____. Tuning: containing the perfection of eighteenth–century temperament, the lost art of nineteenth–century temperament, and the science of equal temperament, complete with instructions for aural and electronic tuning. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1991.

Leedy, Douglas. “A personal view of meantone temperament.” The Courant 5 (1983), 3–19.

Lindley, Mark. “A suggested improvement for the Fisk organ at Stanford.” Performance Practice Review 1 (1988), 107–32.

____. “Interval” and “Temperament.” New Grove Dictionary . New York and London, 1980.

____. “Simmung und Temperatur.” In Geschichte des Musiktheorie 6: Hören, Messen und Rechnen in der Frühen Neuzeit. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1987.

Lloyd, Ll. S., and Hugh Boyle. Intervals, Scales, and Temperaments. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1963.

Vallotti, P. Francescantonio. Trattato della Moderna Musica. Padova: Basilica del Santo, 1950.

Young, Thomas. “Of the temperament of musical intervals.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London for the year 1800. London, The Royal Society, 1800.

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