Well Temperaments (Part 1)

The tuning system called ‘quarter-comma meantone’ dominated western keyboard music from about 1550 to roughly 1690. The reason: it has very nice thirds and fifths in many different keys!

But as I keep saying, every tuning system has problems: like lumps in the carpet, the best you can do is move the problems around. Quarter-comma meantone achieves its greatness by completely flattening out the carpet except for one big lump: a single highly dissonant ‘wolf fifth’. Alas, this utterly spoils k...