How equal temperament ruined harmony

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1. wilsonnb3Mar 2026
   I highly recommend the book “How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care)” if you are interested in this subject.
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2. tsmOct 2024
   If you find this remotely intriguing, I highly recommend Ross Duffin's book How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (And Why You Should Care)

   https://search.worldcat.org/title/How-equal-temperament-ruin...

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3. naltrocAug 2024
   Here are three additional references on applied Just Intonation.

   The first book is abstracted away from composition and provides a more general description of tuning systems.

   The next two are composition focused, explaining how tuning system is an option for musical works.

   1) The book "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony" provides excellent historical context on why ET was a great solution and how we kind of got stuck with it.

   While it could be read by anybody, having a bit of musical knowledge OR physics of acoustics knowledge may benefit you.

   https://www.amazon.com/Equal-Temperament-Ruined-Harmony-Shou...

   There are also two composers who recognize ET as a constraint (as opposed to the "the only option").

   2) Harry Partch built many of his own instruments to circumvent issues from 12ET and composed music just for them. He describes his conceptualizations of JI in "Genesis Of A Music":

   https://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Music-Account-Creative-Fulfil...

   3) Paul Hindemtith also has some opinions on the matter, though both Partch and I disagree with his points of view. Nonetheless he has some at-the-time innovating ideas, some of which are valid and others of which may not have aged well. You can read about them in "The Craft of Musical Composition"

   https://www.amazon.com/Craft-Musical-Composition-Theoretical...

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4. kmillNov 2020
   You might find the book "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony" interesting, which presents a reasonably strong case that pre-1900s western music treated enharmonics as distinct pitches ("enharmonic" in the old sense seems to have referred to the distinction). Singers knew about major and minor semitones, and they knew where to place commas. Though, no one seemed to go as far as doing full just intonation due to various kinds of obvious and non-obvious impracticalities.

   All in all, I think it's safe to say that string players and singers prefer slightly flatter thirds in harmonies than 12-EDO -- which is what the above amounts to -- and deal with commas accordingly.

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5. frankhorriganMar 2019
   I also really appreciated "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care)" by Ross Duffin.
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6. dcsommerApr 2015
   I'd recommend "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony" if you are interested in the nuances and trade offs of the imperfections of tuning.
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