Temperament: The Idea That Solved Music's Greatest Riddle

Isacoff, Stuart

ISBN 10: 0375403558 / ISBN 13: 9780375403552

Editore: Knopf, US, 2001

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A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting.The spine remains undamaged. A fascinating and hugely original book that explains how a vexing technical puzzle was solved, making possible some of the most exquisite music ever w ritten. From the days of the ancient Greeks, the creation of music was thought to b e governed by divine and immutable mathematical certainties. But over time skeptics came to understand that those rules limited harmonic possibilities . In Temperament, we see the traditionalists and the innovators battling ac ross the centuries, engaging great thinkers like Newton, Kepler, and Descar tes as well as musicians, craftsmen, church leaders, and heads of state. At the heart of their dispute is the question of how the tones of a musical s cale should be selected. The breakthrough came in the eighteenth century, when the modern keyboard w as given perfect musical symmetry through a tuning of equal temperament, ea ch pitch reliably equidistant from the ones that precede and follow it. Thi s tuning allows a musical pattern begun on one note to be duplicated when s tarting on any other; it creates a musical universe in which the relationsh ips between tones are reliably, uniformly consistent--a universe of greatly expanded possibility, one that allowed Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, and all those who followed to compose the piano music we listen to today. Stuart Isacoff relates the story of the reinvention of the piano--a story that encompasses social history, religion, philosophy, and science as well as musicology--in a concise and sparkling narrati.

Codice articolo RWARE0000074516

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Temperament: The Idea That Solved Music's Greatest Riddle
• Editore: Knopf, US
• Data di pubblicazione: 2001
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0375403558
• ISBN 13: 9780375403552
• Rilegatura: Hardcover
• Edizione: First Edition.
• Condizione: Very Good/Very Good
• Cataloghi dei venditori:
  • Music

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Explores the eighteenth-century musical breakthrough that led to the creation of the modern piano keyboard, which greatly expanded the creative possibilities of classical composition.

Informazioni sull?autore

Stuart Isacoff, a recipient of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music, is a pianist, lecturer, composer, and the creator and editor in chief of the country's largest-circulation classical piano magazine, <i>Piano Today</i>. He has contributed to <i>The New Grove Dictionary of American Music</i> and has written for the <i>New York Times</i>. He lives in Bergen County, New Jersey.