Well, I don't claim to know much about Asian music, but I've played
and studied early Western music a bit. The claim that harmony didn't
exist until tempered intonation struck me as, well, greatly
exaggerated so I went back and dug out the copy of "A History of
Western Music" by Donald Jay Grout I used in college, and had a look.
According to Professor Grout, equal temperment was theorized in the
early 16th century and "apparently in actual use for lutes, viols and
other fretted instruments during the 16th and 17th centuries" and came
to be used for keyboard instruments in the early 18th century. Bach's
"Wohltemperierte Klavier" was published in 1722, for instance.
Now, was what we call harmony used before that? Most assuredly. What
do we call the wonderful motets of Josquin des Pres(1440-1521)? Or
Andrea Gabrielli at St. Mark's in Venice? bOr
the earlier composer Petrus de Cruce (c. 1300)? Surely asll these were
masters of harmony as well as counterpoint, as far as it had developed in their times.
In fact, according to Grout, thirds were beginning to be regarded as
consonances (and to be used in harmonies) and the fourth used less in
the 13th century, and he gives examples of stylized cadences in
general use "after 1250". Hardly a time of no harmony.
Well, this is the Jazz Harmony list, not the Music History list, so
I'll end here. It seems to me clear that harmony was in fact used
long before equal temperment, and is quite compatible with Just
intonation -- I even tuned my harpsichord in Just Intonation once as
an experiment. (F Major was wonderful, C and B-flat were OK,
everything else was awful) (Or maybe it was Mean-tone, it was a long
time ago and I had a lot mroe free time..)
So I guess I don't understand Kevin's assertion that there was no
harmony before "tempered intonation", or he means something different
than I understand by the term "tempered intonation".
--berry
Berry Kercheval :: kerch@parc.xerox.com :: Xerox Palo Alto Research Center