{"product_id":"temperament-isbn-9780375703300","title":"Temperament","description":"Few music lovers realize that the arrangement of notes on today’s pianos was once regarded as a crime against God and nature, or that such legendary thinkers as Pythagoras, Plato, da Vinci, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Newton and Rousseau played a role in the controversy.  Indeed, from the time of the Ancient Greeks through the eras of Renaissance scientists and Enlightenment philosophers, the relationship between the notes of the musical scale was seen as a key to the very nature of the universe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this engaging and accessible account, Stuart Isacoff leads us through the battles over that scale, placing them in the context of quarrels in the worlds of art, philosophy, religion, politics and science.  The contentious adoption of the modern tuning system known as \u003ci\u003eequal temperament\u003c\/i\u003e called into question beliefs that had lasted nearly two millenia–and also made possible the music of Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, and all who followed.  Filled with original insights, fascinating anecdotes, and portraits of some of the greatest geniuses of all time, \u003cb\u003eTemperament\u003c\/b\u003e is that rare book that will delight the novice and expert alike.“Isacoff . . . untangles the complexities . . . with the aplomb of a virtuoso pianist playing scales.” \u003ci\u003e—The New York Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“A thrilling story that is as accessible as it is absorbing. . . . This is a whirlwind tour through the history of Western culture, told with flair and grace.” —\u003ci\u003eNational Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Immensely entertaining, original and informative. [\u003cb\u003eTemperament\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e’s\u003c\/i\u003e]\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003emost persuasive weapon is the unquenchable passion of its author.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Economist\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Admirable. . . . [Isacoff] writes engagingly. . . . [about] a time when there existed a glorious synthesis of music and mathematics, and in the imaginations of scientists and philosophers and musicians it wove the entire universe into a grand design.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe New Republic\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Charming. . . . As much a whirlwind tour of Western culture’s big ideas as it is a musicological investigation.”  —\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The pleasure here is that it gives readers a glimpse of the oceanic depths of musical metaphors and mysteries still unsolved by cognitive science and evolutionary psychology.” —\u003ci\u003eWilson Quarterly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A sweeping history of medieval and Renaissance European intellectual achievement, in which the question of tuning assumes a speaking part. . . . \u003cb\u003eTemperament\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eshould appeal not only to music lovers but also to fans of cultural and scientific history.” —\u003ci\u003eTime Out New York\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An astounding and accessible journey through the culture-defining narrative hidden in arcane music theory.  Isacoff does a wondrous job.”  —\u003ci\u003eThe Onion\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This lucid, humanist study is as much fun to read as a murder mystery.” —\u003ci\u003eSan Jose Mercury News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Brings] together aspects of science, philosophy, history, poetry, religion, and music in a compact yet compelling narrative.” —\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eStuart Isacoff is a pianist, composer and writer, and the founding editor of the magazine \u003ci\u003ePiano Today\u003c\/i\u003e. A winner of the prestigious ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music, he is a frequent contributor to \u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e and many music periodicals. Mr. Isacoff is a featured lecturer at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where his series is entitled “The Language Of Music.” He has given lectures and piano performances at many venues here and abroad, including The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, The Verbier Festival and Academy, The Gina Bachauer Foundation, The Miami Piano Festival, The Portland Piano Festival, The Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, the Juilliard School, Sarah Lawrence, Cal Arts, and Harvard University, and at such scientific institutions and conferences as the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Bradbury Science Museum, the Sarzana (Italy) Festival of Mind and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His work in interdisciplinary studies has also brought him to such venues as the Vero Beach Museum of Art, where he lectured on links between kinetic art and music.Mr. Isacoff teaches a graduate course in the philosophy of music and an undergraduate survey in the history of Western music at the Purchase College Conservatory of Music (SUNY), and a course in the art of writing at St. John’s University. He has also taught musical improvisation at William Paterson University and at festivals around the world. His written works include jazz-influenced compositions and instructional materials, published by Boosey \u0026amp; Hawkes, G. Schirmer, Warner Bros. Publications, Carl Fischer, and Ekay Music, Inc. His piano recitals often combine classical repertoire with jazz improvisation, demonstrating the threads that connect musical works created centuries and continents apart.Chapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAy me! what warbles yields mine instrument!\u003cbr\u003eThe basses shriek as though they were amiss!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e-William Percy, \"Coelia\" (1594)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe piano is perhaps the most generous instrument ever invented. Its  range, from bass to treble, is as large as an orchestra's. It allows  ten tones-sometimes even more-to be struck simultaneously, and holds  them in the air at a pianist's will. The piano can growl and sing and  beat time. It can render arid fugues and impressionist waterfalls  with equal naturalness. And, unlike the ungrateful French horn or the  finicky oboe, if you keep it in tune, it will be an obedient servant.  But the principle that truly underlies the piano's versatility is  hidden beneath the geometry of its white and black keys.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eClusters of two blacks, then three, then two, and so on, form a  repeating pattern above a solid row of whites. When one's eye has  become accustomed to the terrain, the alternating groupings signal  the names of each note on the keyboard. There are only twelve  different ones (each tied to a letter of the alphabet), and in our  modern tuning they are built in equidistant steps, like a well-made  ladder.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis arrangement produces wondrous results: Through it, a Chopin  prelude can gently weep across the keys; Debussy's perfumed phrases  can swirl in gentle clouds; Webern can set in motion intricate  strings of melody, like threads of glistening pearls.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAll of this is possible only because the modern keyboard is a design  in perfect symmetry-each pitch is reliably, unequivocally equidistant  from the ones that precede and follow it. This tuning allows a  musical pattern begun on one note to be duplicated when starting on  any other; it creates a musical universe in which the relationships  between musical tones are reliably, uniformly consistent. Playing a  piano for which this was not true would be like playing a game of  chess in which the rules changed from moment to moment.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYet, that is precisely what many European musicians practicing before  the nineteenth century demanded of their instruments. In fact, for  hundreds of years, suggestions that our modern system be used were  taken as a call to battle: Musicians, craftsmen, church officials,  heads of state, and philosophers fought heatedly against the  introduction of this equal-temperament tuning as something both  unnatural and ugly. When Galileo's father, Vincenzo Galilei,  supported it as an ideal as early as 1581, he promptly became  embroiled in a feud with Gioseffo Zarlino, one of the most  influential music theorists of the day. (Sensing a good thing, Chu Tsai-yü, a prince of the Ming dynasty, soon after attributed the  concept to the work of Huai Nan Tzu in 122 b.c.e.)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe seventeenth-century instrument-maker Jean Denis-an advisor to  Father Marin Mersenne, philosopher René Descartes's most trusted  authority on science and math-rejected today's approach as \"quite  wretched.\" Denis's Treatise on Harpsichord Tuning was published in  1643, the year that a pupil of Galileo's, Evangelista Torricelli,  conducted world-shaking experiments in atmospheric pressure,  overturning essential elements of medieval cosmology. Though radical  changes in worldview were erupting all around him, Denis remained  steadfastly loyal to an old tuning system in which the musical  distances between notes were determinedly inconsistent, forming a  minefield of \"wolf sounds\" on his keyboard-notes so dissonant they  reminded listeners of the howling of wolves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHarpsichords and organs (precursors of the piano) thus tuned were  capable of producing harmonies of magical, uncorrupted sweetness in  one moment and-as musicians attempted to duplicate them while  navigating the spans of their keyboards-of earsplitting clashes the next. Composers were prisoners of these torturous practicalities, as  were vocalists and instrumentalists who tried to join in. Yet the  resistance to a remedy that we find perfectly acceptable today-the  tuning of equal temperament-was so powerful, the idea was for  generations almost unspeakable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe crux of the problem can be traced to the ancient Greeks, who  defined music's most beautiful sounds as arising from inviolable  mathematical relationships-the fingerprints of the gods. These were  the proportions through which two separate tones could entwine to  form a delightful union. Centuries after Pythagoras conceived of the  notion, the great astronomer and music theorist Johannes Kepler  restated the idea eloquently: \"Geometry existed before the creation,  is coeternal with the mind of God, is God himself. . . .\" Musical  harmony was that geometry made sensual, and was not to be toyed with.  And yet . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs the art of music evolved, a startling paradox arose that  threatened to undermine the entire arrangement. When harpsichords or  organs were tuned so that they could consistently produce sounds  corresponding to one of the venerable formulas, they were rendered  incapable of playing the others. No instrument with fixed, unbending  notes such as a piano can accommodate them all. Thus, certain  combinations of tones that should have sounded sweet and placid  could, on an early keyboard instrument, become sour and ragged. In  search of a solution, musicians began to temper, or alter, their  instrument's tunings away from the ancient ideals. The final  solution-today's equal temperament-abandoned most of the revered  musical proportions altogether.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcceptance did not come easily. Critics claimed the resulting music  had been robbed of its beauty and emotional impact; supporters  countered that since all things are subjective, human ears and minds  would learn to adapt. The arguments, however, went well beyond  musical aesthetics. Equal temperament represented an assault on an  idea that had gripped thinkers in nearly every field as a powerful  metaphor for a universe ruled by mathematical law.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSaint Augustine found in music's magical proportions God's revealed  plan for the building of his churches. Renaissance philosophers  sought in them the secrets of obtaining life from the heavens;  composers yearned for the power they had bestowed on ancient  musicians to tame wild beasts, seduce the celestial spirits, even  lure trees to the surface from beneath the sheltering earth. Kepler  found in music's time-honored proportions the rules governing the  motion of planets in the sky. And Isaac Newton matched the  relationships these proportions established between pitches in a  musical scale to the arrangement of colors formed by sunlight passing  through a prism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMusic's prized proportions permeated not only the inner sanctums of  the church, but the workshops of great artists like Filippo  Brunelleschi and Leonardo da Vinci. They became entangled in the  world of scientific inquiry-engaging the imaginations of such  luminaries as Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Newton, and Christiaan  Huygens. They fed debates between the French encyclopedists,  challenging the rhetorical skills of Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques  Rousseau, Jean d'Alembert, and Jean-Philippe Rameau on questions such  as \"What is 'art'?\" \"What is 'truth'?\" and \"What is 'natural'?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey spurred strange musical inventions from remarkable figures like  the sixteenth-century avant-garde composer Nicola Vicentino,  Mersenne, and Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, a Spanish mathematician,  professor of theology, and military engineer at the court of  Ferdinand III in Prague. And they instigated the creation of  countless tuning systems in an incessant negotiation between the old  ways and the forces of change. Along the way, they pointed up the  conceits and follies of generations of theologians, musicians,  philosophers, and scholars who insisted that the proportions in the  mind of God must fit in the mind of man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe general acceptance of equal temperament led to some of the most  exquisite music ever written. Why the resistance to it lasted so  long, and how it was gradually overcome, is a story that encompasses  the most crucial elements of Western culture-social history,  religion, philosophy, art, science, economics, and musical  evolution-during a period when Europe was struggling to give birth to  the modern age. This book tells that story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is a tale that includes \"temperament\" in all its diverse meanings:  from the elements that shape the temperament, or character, of  pivotal thinkers; to endless efforts to temper-or transform-the  material world into something more desirable; to the practice of  tempering, or altering, the purest, most beautiful harmonies,  following the startling revelation that in certain situations they  must be reshaped or they will transform music, Jekyll-and-Hyde-like,  into something grotesque.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis last definition, though arcane sounding, marks a profound moment  in cultural history. Temperaments, settling like tracks along the  winding path of Western civilization, unfettered the engine of  musical progress. Once freed, and fueled by the sparks of those most  human of qualities-imagination and passion-musical art, with  religion, politics, and science in tow, chugged its way inescapably  toward our own era.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303341674725,"sku":"NP9780375703300","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375703300.jpg?v=1767737882","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/temperament-isbn-9780375703300","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}