An unusual book review
A review of the UNEQUAL TEMPERAMENTS eBook (UT) has been published by The Viola da Gamba Society Journal in Dec. 2009. If you wish to download it, please go to to the VdGS Journal webpage and click on "Volume Three, Part Two (2009) - download PDF (3 MB)". Find the review in pages 137-163. I was astonished to see that the author, Dr. Bradley Lehman, had devoted so much effort and space to reviewing my UT book. My first reaction was enthusiastic, especially after reading the last sentence: "The book is certainly worth its price, and more. I hope that this review itself leads to serious scholarly and practical discussion of the musical and theoretical points raised; and to a third edition of UT!". I thought: "Great! 27 pages worth of suggestions to further improve my book!". Sadly, as I started reading the text, any such hopes were quickly quashed.
I am now in my sixties and my published works on music have over the years been held in high esteem by world-respected musicians. UT has been praised in public and in private by many readers, quite a few of them as knowledgeable about temperaments as Dr. Lehman and at least a few, in my personal opinion, much more so. As I went through this review, however, I found that it was—very ostensibly—not an objective analysis but rather a fully-loaded diatribe. Of the several recognised original contributions in the book, the review acknowledges one, strongly criticises another one which—oh surprise—contradicts Lehman's own Bach temperament ideas, and happily ignores the rest. Even worse, the reviewer strongly objects to the eBook presentation, layout, formatting, organisation, ideas, language, tables, mathematics, historical presentation, tuning methods and every conceivable detail. He boldly deplores my purported "disorganized thought process", "weak standard of scholarship", "mathematical points ... based on faulty premises", "page layout ... amateurish". Even without scrutinising the scores of Lehman's objections, it is quite obvious that a work held in high esteem by so many knowledgeable readers is unlikely to be as thoroughly bad as Lehman depicts it.
As I examined the review's 27 pages I found that its main points fit neatly into four groups:
1) Digressions (several pages) where the reviewer, in disagreement with the ideas in UT, actually explains in detail how he would write such a book. As if this was not bad enough, in some important points Lehman's statements run counter to proven facts and the experience of over a century of modern keyboard tuning.
2) Unsubstantiated criticisms (in no less than 15 different topics), mostly based on selective quoting that significantly distorts information clearly conveyed in the book under review,
3) Objections that arise from the reviewer's erroneous methods, ideas or calculations (more than 10 instances),
4) Favourable comments and well-spotted minor errors (a few lines only).
Anybody who cares to compare the UT contents with the review will concur that the latter reflects much better on the character, methods and ideas of Dr. Lehman than on my own and the book. It is worth noting that Lehman's main musicological work has been his Bach's temperament proposal, which he had published in Early Music, vol. 33, 2005. The methods he used and the conclusions he reached have been the subject of an authoritative review by Dr. Ibo Ortgies (a young but already respected scholar) and Prof. Mark Lindley (for decades considered *the* scholar on temperaments), published also in Early Music, vol. 34, pp.613-624, 2006. Find here an Abstract that makes fascinating reading.
Dr. Lehman's review shows that we radically differ in our keyboard tuning philosophy, in our approach to the use of mathematical tools, in our methods to interpret ancient sources on music, in our ways to deduce how the average early musician would tune and/or play, in our advice to modern musicians about tuning and, quite obviously, in how a scholarly review to a treatise should be written. Indeed, one thing he has conclusively proved: that our approaches to music and musicological research could not be more different. Maybe it is me who is completely wrong but, given the opinion on Lehman's methods by respected scholars like Lindley and Ortgies, I am certainly in good company.
I have now fully substantiated and expanded the above comments in a detailed response to Lehman's review. This response will be published in the future and the details will be given in this webpage. Stay tuned!
Claudio Di Veroli
Bray, Rep. Ireland, Jan. 2010.
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PS: Many self-styled temperament specialists have filled the Internet with webpages, sometimes including a hodge-podge of correct descriptions lifted from published books—without correctly quoting the source—and then writing a comment without realising that it contradicts the description. Or else they write groundless accusations based on fully inconsistent arguments. An anonymous webpage suggests that, in my discussion of Barnes on Early Music in 1981 "Di Veroli . ...(1981) di Veroli propose le tempérament de Vallotti-Barca ou de Young sans se souvenir qu'une formule de ce genre avait été construite par Werckmeister (6 quintes de fa à si réduites de 1/6 de comma pythagoricien, les 6 autres quintes sont pures)." This is not only offensive, but untrue and contradictory:
1. First of all, Werckmeister's publications never described such a thing.
2. Similar ones ("de ce genre") he did, e.g. Werckmeister III, but it is erroneous to state that I "did not realise": my piece of 1981 in Early Music discusses it together with Vallotti!
3. The webpage proceeds: "Il existe suffisamment de tempéraments historiques sans avoir besoin d'en inventer de nouveaux." The text clearly suggests that I invented something in 1981, but the discussion in Early Music included only one new temperament: Barnes.
4. The webpage is also implying that any attempt to reconstruct a lost temperament is pointless, thus denying, with a half-line argument, the validity of the important work of many modern researchers in the matter.
5. Finally, much further down, we find another section: "Tartini - Vallotti - Barca", describing the historical evolution of the system in the 18th c. ending in a Circle of Fifths tempered by 1/6 Pyth.Comma from F to B, the remaining 6 fifths pure, which is what we call today "Vallotti's temperament". The author of the webpage seems to be unaware that this is exactly the same system he described in the previous "Di Veroli" section where, however, he had qualified it as both a copy from Werckmeister and a modern invention . . .
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