On Monday 14 February 2011 20:30:44 Henry Baker wrote:
Bach apparently encoded his "well-tempered" tuning formula into a squiggle of loops & knots on the cover page of his "Well-Tempered Clavier" music. The subsequent music in the book is itself is a "proof" that his tuning formula works, by running through the various chords & progressions. Bach's diagram/cryptogram was apparently overlooked as a mere ornament for the past nearly 300 years, until musician/software engineer Bradley Lehman decoded this tuning diagram.
It's worth saying that Lehman's interpretation is controversial; by no means everyone who's looked into the matter agrees that the ornamentation on the title page of the WTC encodes a tuning scheme, nor that if it does it's Lehman's. Richard Egarr's recording of the WTC uses Lehmann's tuning. I think it sounds rather good. -- g