The Establishment of Equal Temperament

Equal temperament is the foundation for modern music, yet most musicians have no concept of its meaning. In a modern culture that treats music solely as a means of entertainment, there is no need to understand the complex mathematical foundation on which music was created. However, hundreds of years ago, there existed an entire culture that integrated these numbers into their philosophies and way of living. Unfortunately, there were flaws in the relationships between the numbers that were kept secret for several centuries. These imperfections could not be hidden forever, and as the years wore on, people began to fight the old traditions. Many intellectual and religious leaders created solutions to compensate for those flaws and thus old systems of tuning were challenged by these new methods. Humans have always struggled with change and implementation of modern tuning and temperament methods were no exception. Thus, the road to the establishment of equal temperament tuning became a long, and difficult battle against the laws of the universe