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Title: Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization by Stuart Isacoff ISBN: 0-375-70330-6 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 04 February, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.27 (37 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Nice Beginner Read
Comment: This is one of the most readable books on the history of temperment I have ever encountered! If you have ever wanted to know a little something about European music history, or the theory behind European music - definitely pick this up. It's a comfortable read, full of short anecdotes, and a non-technical style that is fresh and uninitimidating.
Unfortunately, it sacrifices well-roundedness, and limits itself in the interest of a reader-friendly view. This is certainly not a comprehensive view on the subject and includes nothing of non-European music systems. I don't see this as a failing, merely different target. I would encourage the interested reader to take the basis provided with this book to further research and form one's own opinion
Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting subject, unsatisfactory treatment
Comment: The book is too anecdotal, an amateurish cultural history. Many of the materials are not quite relevant. If the author stuck to the subject the pages could be two-third less. Hope someone will come up with a better one.
Rating: 5
Summary: Why you might/might not like this book: Reviewing reviews
Comment: I thoroughly enjoyed this book and, for the first time in my life, feel that I actually understand the issues around temperament. I would recommend this book to a lot of people but not everyone, as the number of negative reviews illustrates. The negative reviews for this book seem to fall into four categories-if you are in one of those groups then you may want to buy a different book:
1) The lunatic fringe: Examples here are: The review that castigates the book for abusing non-Western music (It's hard to see the point of this complaint since the intent of the book is to discuss the role of temperament in Western music--no real mention is made of any other kind of music); The review by the person who read only a 2 or 3 page excerpt of the book (apparently ignorance is no impediment to opinion); The person who hadn't read the book yet but would post a review when they had (see previous); The reviewer who felt that the book was all about sex (I missed that). And so on.
2) People who were unhappy about the lack of technical detail. While I am obviously disparaging the previous group, these reviewers have a valid complaint. These readers were looking for (as examples): actual scores; more math with more explicit discussion of the exact size of the differentials between similarly named tones; more technical terms (e.g. "hertz"). I have a good grounding in math, read a lot of technical material, but would probably best be described as a "music lover". I'm just not in these reviewers league. Since I don't read music, for instance, a score would be useless to me. For the audience that I represent, the level of technical detail worked very well and is appropriate for a "general interest" book. The author's description of the music met my needs and the prescence of a score wouldn't have helped. I didn't miss the technical details that these other readers were looking for.
3) Reviewers who felt a lot of the book was irrelevant and fluff. Also a valid comment as much of the book isn't directly about temperament (as an example, these reviewers would probably point to chapter 7, which is an overview of the birth of the Renaissance). However, the author's intent is not to discuss temperament but to discuss how the battles over temperament reflected much of what else was going on politically and culturally at the time. He wants to claim that the discussions of temperament reflected other battles and that the arguments over temperament were enabled only by other changes going on in the world. If that larger discussion doesn't interest you, this is the wrong book for you in the same way that the lack of technical detail made the book an unhappy experience for the previous group of readers. Again, I enjoy the kind of writing that tries to draw connections between relatively obscure technical matters and larger social interests. However, it does mean that this isn't a book that is just about temperament.
4) People who wished the author had gone into more detail/covered more topics. As examples: Apparently well-temperament has gotten short shrift (I can see that I would have liked more on the topic); The book focuses on the issues as demonstrated by tuning pianos (the author announces this early in the book); Some readers would have like more on temperament issues with other kinds of instruments; other readers wished the author had followed up on reference to temperament in China, organs, and other topics. Apparently there is room here for a larger book on this topic. I enjoyed the length of the book and it didn't leave me wanting more but that may just reveal my ignorance of the subject: Had I known more I may have wanted more.
If you are looking for a medium-length discussion of temperament (a critical topic in understanding music) for the general reader and music lover, a book that tries to tie this topic into the larger cultural/political/social changes in the world--then this is a fascinating book. It's well written (a couple of stretched metaphors) and interesting (I devoured it in two days). If you are looking for a broader study, a more technical discussion, or a discussion of temperament purely in musical terms then you will be disappointed. I got excited about the topic! The book made me want to buy a CD that demonstrates the issues by playing the same piece of music in several different tunings--something that I wouldn't even have considered before.
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Title: Piano Roles: A New History of the Piano by James Parakilas, E. Douglas Bomberger, Martha Dennis Burns ISBN: 0300093063 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier by Thad Carhart ISBN: 0375758623 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 12 March, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Harmonograph: A Visual Guide to the Mathematics of Music by Anthony Ashton ISBN: 0802714099 Publisher: Walker & Company Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Super Sight-Reading Secrets: An Innovative, Step-By-Step Program for Musical Keyboard Players of All Levels by Howard B. Richman ISBN: 0961596309 Publisher: Sound Feelings Pub Pub. Date: June, 1986 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Measured Tones: The Interplay of Physics and Music by Ian Johnston ISBN: 0750307625 Publisher: Institute of Physics Publishing Pub. Date: August, 2002 List Price(USD): $34.99 |
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