Musicalische Temperatur

Andreas Werckmeister (1645-1706) travelled so little that one might call him a provincial thinker, yet he is historically one of the two or three most significant writers on tempered scales, which have constituted a pivotal technical aspect of Western music during the period – from the Renaissance until the 20th century – when the key­board has served as a basic medium of musical thought. ...

Werckmeister’s contribution. Werckmeister was the first theorist of irregular ‘good temperament’. He rejected the use of subsemitones as „nur ein Flickwerk“ and designed, for music in which „ficte viel gebraucht wird“, the temperament. This is the scheme referred to by 18th-century writers as „Werckmeisters Temperatur“ or „Werckmeisters Stimmung“. ... In this light Werckmeister may fairly be called the prophet and pioneer of an aesthetically valuable kind of chromatic scale which went out of use in the 19th century as the equal-step temperament became the norm. ... (aus dem Nachwort von Mark Lindley)