The Temperamental Mr. Purcell [CD on Demand]

James Pressler (Artist)

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 17, 2008)
• Label: Frog Music Press
• ASIN: B001LF34UQ
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #996,592 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A Compact Disk that explores historical tuning temperaments through direct comparison.

Hear multiple historic keyboard temperaments in direct comparison. A breakthrough recording for musicians, theorists and students of physics.

Before the time of Christ, Greek musicians and mathematicians were embroiled in the challenge of understanding the difficulties of tuning keyboard instruments with an octave of 12 pitches. Early tunings emphasized certain intervals as being in tune, and accepted others as being out of tune, to the point of being unusable. Later tunings smoothed this out to the point now where we have a universal equal tuning system in use. But this system actually consists of all intervals being equally out of tune. Interest has always existed in being able to directly compare how these tuning systems really compare. This CD finally offers that and answers many questions.

Suite in G Minor

1 EQUAL
2 WERCKMEISTER
3 KIRNBERGER
4 VALOTTI
5 YOUNG
6 MEANTONE
7 PYTHAGOREAN

The Recording
To ensure that the use of the temperaments would not influence the performance of the music, the music was prepared in the form of a MIDI file by James Pressler, creator of Bach By Immersion.

A Roland^(r) C-80 Digital Harpsichord was used for this recording. A freestanding instrument, it has a disposition of 8', 8', 8' + 8', 8' + 4', Lute, Celesta, Organ Gedeckt 8', Organ Principals 8' + 4'.

This product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.