Temperament – The Idea That Solved Music’s Greatest Riddle
If you enjoyed Nick Torres’ Gin and Diatonic, then let me recommend Stuart Isacoff’s fascinating book, Temperament. We like to think that music is a wonderfully simple thing, but, as you will read, it took a long while to get to this point.
Mr. Isacoff is an entertaining storyteller and while he may bombard you with a lot of names and places, whisking you from Greece to a medieval courtyard to Florence and then to China, it is an incredibly wonderful ride. You meet names you know, like Newton, da Vinci and Galileo, along with many other colorful characters. In fact, you’ll find out so many things about so many different things, that you may find people looking at you as some sort of Renaissance man.
Temperament is something we really don’t think a lot about (if ever) these days, but without it, none of the polyphonic instruments we use, such as the guitar and piano, wouldn’t work. Mr. Isacoff’s book deftly lays out the inherent problems of harmony and then invites you along for a look at how some of history’s greatest minds came to grips with bringing harmony into the real world.
