Talk:Young temperament

Music theory Low‑importance

	Music portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Music theory, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of music theory, theory terminology, music theorists, and musical analysis on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Music theoryWikipedia:WikiProject Music theoryTemplate:WikiProject Music theoryMusic theory
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Inconsistency

The two tables contradict eachother a tiny bit, 1 cent to be exact. The table of thirds states that the C-E third is 5 cents wide, meaning 386+5=391 cents. However, if we look in the table that compares this tuning with equal temperament, we learn that the C is 6 cents up and the E is 2 cents down, so that is 400-6-2=392 cents.

I wonder weather if the users of wikipedia are interested to learn about the character of these well-tempered tuning variants. I'm tuning one of the grandpiano in our school to a different variant every so many months. Every key gets it's own mood, but as we modulate from one key to the other, the tuning itself gets a general mood in itself.

Werckmeister III is very serious. This fits Bachs music very well. Young is very well accepted by people who are used to 12 tone equal temperament, as none of the major thirds sound radically low. In general it sounds a lot lighter than Werckmeister. It's happy and jumpy in the most used keys.

Krooshof 22:07, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This discrepancy is simply the result of rounding error. Of all the numbers used in this calculation only the size of the equal temperament major third is exactly a whole number of cents. All the others are irrational and have been rounded to the nearest cent. To four decimal places, the size of the just major third is 386.3137¢ and the size of the A-E major third in Young's (first) temperament is 391.6903¢—i.e. 5.3766¢ wider. Rounding 5.3766 down to the nearest cent gives the 5¢ quoted in the article. If the A's of an equal temperament scale and a Young's first temperament scale coincide in pitch, then to four decimal places the Young's temperament C will be 6.2323¢ sharper than the equal temperament C, while the Young's temperament E will be 2.0774¢ flatter than the equal temperament E. Again, rounding these two numbers to the nearest cent gives the 6¢ and 2¢ quoted in the article. But if you use all four decimal places in computing the difference between the Young's temperament A and E you get 400 — 6.2323 — 2.0774 = 391.6903 , which coincides with the true size to four decimal places.

There is, however, one major problem with the article. It has conflated two different temperaments Young gave in his letter to the Royal Philosophical Society. The numbers given in the tables are for his first temperament, while the description partially quoted in the article's second paragraph is that of his second temperament. Also, it is not true that the "six equally imperfect fifths" in this latter temperament are "progressively purer", as the article states. As the description "equally imperfect" implies, they are all equally flat by one sixth of a Pythagorean comma.

David Wilson (talk · cont)

Table formatting

Recent changes to the formatting of the tables in the article has eliminated vertical space setting them off from its text, and left-justified the text appearing in most of the tables' cells. In my opinion, both of those changes have done quite the opposite of improving the article, and I have now reverted them. If you wish to restore them, please provide some sound justification for doing so.
David Wilson (talk · cont) 03:03, 13 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Different representations

I've run into 3 different representations of Young's 1st temperament.

Young #1
Comma	A-E	E-B	B-F#	G#-D#	A#-F	F-C	C-G	G-D	D-A
Pythagorean (diatonic)	-1/6	-1/12	-1/12	0	- 1/12	-1/12	-1/6	-1/6	-1/6
Syntonic	-3/16	about -1/12	about -1/12	0	about -1/12	about -1/12	-3/16	-3/16	-3/16
Syntonic	-1/6	-1/12	-1/12	Sch (about -1/11)	-1/12	-1/12	-1/6	-1/6	-1/6

The second version is what we have in the article currently, and apparently what Young wrote down, while the first makes the math easier with basically the same result. The 3rd version (pictured at the right) I found while I was looking for an image for this article, and I find it quite intriguing. I don't think we can use this image as it contradicts what the article says, but I do wonder where it came from and whose idea it was to put the schisma in the position of the traditional wolf. Overall it brings the temperament slightly closer to equal temperament. ~Awilley (talk) 05:40, 2 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

There's a typo in the A-E column of the second version in your table. It should be -3/16, not -1/6.

David Wilson (talk · cont) 11:55, 2 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Fixed, thank you. ~Awilley (talk) 16:53, 2 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've just realised that the first temperament in your list is actually Young's second temperament, already described in the article, and a shift of which is today commonly misattributed to Francesco Vallotti. The third one in your list is a shift of the one which Vallotti actually did devise, which is described as such in the article about it. Any attribution of it to Young is almost certainly mistaken, as there's no trace of it in the articles of Young's where he describes those two temperaments that can be reliably attributed to him.

David Wilson (now using account Freda Nurk) (talk) 13:52, 12 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

To add to article

Basic information to add to this article: how the Young temperament relates to meantone temperaments. 173.88.246.138 (talk) 20:40, 31 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]