Memo-1409

Type:

Bach Seal

Title:

Bach Seal

Description:

What about Kellner's claim to have found important 5s and 7s in Bach's seal, indicating five tempered 5ths and seven pure 5ths? What of it? One could just as easily claim that there are numbers 1, 3, 3, 5 in the crown of it, and that they indicate the one wide 5^th (A#-F), the three 1/12 PC 5ths (C#-G#-D#-A#), the three pure 5ths (E-B-F#-C#), and the five 1/6 PC 5ths (F-C-G-D-A-E) of my proposed temperament here. And it's from the same year--1722--as the WTC title page! Wowee!
But esoteric games of this sort are not sufficient evidence of anything, on their own because the interpretation is so arbitrary, against other equally arbitrary readings of the same monogram. Plenty has been made of the various 14s hidden in this same design. What do they prove? What do they disprove against other readings?
Bach's strongest medium of expression, as an expert musician, was musical sound; I believe we should judge evidence and interpretations by the way Bach's sound is handled. Real sound at good instruments. Not esoteric and arbitrary Quatsch!

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Source/Links: Johann Sebastian Bach's tuning (Bradley Lehman)
Contributor: Teddy Kaufman (December 2007)

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