Temperament: The Idea That Solved Music's Greatest Riddle Review

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Temperament: The Idea That Solved Music's Greatest Riddle ReviewI thoroughly enjoyed this book and, for the first time in my life, feel that I actually understand the issues around temperament. I would recommend this book to a lot of people but not everyone, as the number of negative reviews illustrates. The negative reviews for this book seem to fall into four categories-if you are in one of those groups then you may want to buy a different book:
1) The lunatic fringe: Examples here are: The review that castigates the book for abusing non-Western music (It's hard to see the point of this complaint since the intent of the book is to discuss the role of temperament in Western music--no real mention is made of any other kind of music); The review by the person who read only a 2 or 3 page excerpt of the book (apparently ignorance is no impediment to opinion); The person who hadn't read the book yet but would post a review when they had (see previous); The reviewer who felt that the book was all about sex (I missed that). And so on.
2) People who were unhappy about the lack of technical detail. While I am obviously disparaging the previous group, these reviewers have a valid complaint. These readers were looking for (as examples): actual scores; more math with more explicit discussion of the exact size of the differentials between similarly named tones; more technical terms (e.g. "hertz"). I have a good grounding in math, read a lot of technical material, but would probably best be described as a "music lover". I'm just not in these reviewers league. Since I don't read music, for instance, a score would be useless to me. For the audience that I represent, the level of technical detail worked very well and is appropriate for a "general interest" book. The author's description of the music met my needs and the prescence of a score wouldn't have helped. I didn't miss the technical details that these other readers were looking for.
3) Reviewers who felt a lot of the book was irrelevant and fluff. Also a valid comment as much of the book isn't directly about temperament (as an example, these reviewers would probably point to chapter 7, which is an overview of the birth of the Renaissance). However, the author's intent is not to discuss temperament but to discuss how the battles over temperament reflected much of what else was going on politically and culturally at the time. He wants to claim that the discussions of temperament reflected other battles and that the arguments over temperament were enabled only by other changes going on in the world. If that larger discussion doesn't interest you, this is the wrong book for you in the same way that the lack of technical detail made the book an unhappy experience for the previous group of readers. Again, I enjoy the kind of writing that tries to draw connections between relatively obscure technical matters and larger social interests. However, it does mean that this isn't a book that is just about temperament.
4) People who wished the author had gone into more detail/covered more topics. As examples: Apparently well-temperament has gotten short shrift (I can see that I would have liked more on the topic); The book focuses on the issues as demonstrated by tuning pianos (the author announces this early in the book); Some readers would have like more on temperament issues with other kinds of instruments; other readers wished the author had followed up on reference to temperament in China, organs, and other topics. Apparently there is room here for a larger book on this topic. I enjoyed the length of the book and it didn't leave me wanting more but that may just reveal my ignorance of the subject: Had I known more I may have wanted more.
If you are looking for a medium-length discussion of temperament (a critical topic in understanding music) for the general reader and music lover, a book that tries to tie this topic into the larger cultural/political/social changes in the world--then this is a fascinating book. It's well written (a couple of stretched metaphors) and interesting (I devoured it in two days). If you are looking for a broader study, a more technical discussion, or a discussion of temperament purely in musical terms then you will be disappointed. I got excited about the topic! The book made me want to buy a CD that demonstrates the issues by playing the same piece of music in several different tunings--something that I wouldn't even have considered before.Temperament: The Idea That Solved Music's Greatest Riddle Overview

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