Barbour J. Murray. Tuning and Temperament: A Historical Survey

Michigan State College Press, 1951. — 228 p.This book is based upon my unpublished Cornell dissertation, Equal Temperament: Its History from Ramis (1482) to Rameau (1737), Ithaca, 1932. As the title indicates, the emphasis in the dissertation was upon individual writers. In the present work the emphasis is on the theories rather than on their promulgators. Since a great many tuning systems are discussed, a separate chapter is devoted to each of the principal varieties of tuning, with subsidiary divisions wherever necessary. Even so, the whole subject is so complex that it seemed best that these chapters be preceded by a running account (with a minimum of mathematics) of the entire history of tuning and temperament. Chapter I also contains the principal account of the Pythagorean tuning, for it is unnecessary to spend a chapter upon a tuning system that exists in one form only.