What Did Equal Temperament Make Us Lose?

When the music of Western society adopted twelve-tone equal temperament back in the 18th century, we gave up just intonation, a tuning system based upon whole number ratios that puts the naturally occurring harmonics more in tune with each other. Just listen to these beautifully tuned Koshi Chimes for a few minutes (www.koshi.fr)... get used to the sound. Then listen to an equal-tempered "perfect fifth" I play on the piano. Can you hear what we've lost?
For more about all this, here's my blog: https://imaginingthetenthdimension.blogspot.com/2022/01/what-did-equal-temperament-make-us-lose.html

Not long after I posted this video, user jasperiscool (www.youtube.com/jasperiscool ) provided this useful input, which I am quoting here:

"Hi Rob, I’ve been a long-time follower and it’s good to hear from you again. I was pleasantly surprised that you’ve dedicated this video to my own expertise. That also means I have to set straight a few (admittedly very common) misconceptions.

"You introduce the (twelve tone) equal temperament in one breath with the Well-Tempered Clavier. However, Bach did not prescribe the equal temperament. On the contrary; the book with pieces in all keys served to not only show the versatilities of the common tunings (plural) but also to demonstrate the subtle differences of the various keys, emerging from non-equal tuning of the respective semi-tones. Baroque pieces are authentically still played on non-equally tuned instruments. For example, I keep my harpsichord tuned on Werckmeister III, not 12TET. Church (pipe) organs are also still tuned more pure than 12TET, because the imperfect resonance of two consonants will cause tones to ‘wobble’ if they were.

"There is not only 12-Tone Equal Temperament, by the way. Musicians and composers have experimented with equal divisions of the octave (or sometimes even dividing multiple octaves so the middle octave(s) don’t even align) that will be much closer to just or Pythagorean tuning. If you’re interested, definitely look up some pieces in 23TET, 53TET and the Bohlen–Pierce scale.

"Equal temperament was known and studied well before Bach, but musicians deliberately chose not to use that, since it was regarded less pure than other, more pure tunings. The thing is, music from those times rarely used chromatic notes to modulate to different keys. Keys weren’t fixed anyway. It was only during the 19th century that a pitch standard was desired. At the other hand, there are many renaissance vocal pieces that modulate between what we now would call keys (they used ‘modality’ back then, which is another approach to harmony). They solved the syntonic comma, which makes chromaticism sound out of tune, by just adjusting their singing to the other melodic lines, which means that a song could ‘drift’ in pitch, but always be in tune. More on that trick if you search for Benedetti's Puzzle.

"The beating out of pitch when playing a fifth on the piano is regarded desirable, because it causes other strings to resonate, which makes for a full sound. It’s the same reason each key in the middle register has two strings being played at the same time, three in the high registers even. While it’d be perfect to tune both unison strings exactly the same, room climate will detune them in relation to each other ever so slightly. It makes for a fuller sound than a single-stringed pianoforte, the predecessor of the piano as we know it today. The same effect is used in string orchestras. One violin sounds quite pure, with two violins playing in unison you will hear every inaccuracy because two players will never produce the exact same tone and vibrato. With three violins that effect is lifted and instead, you get a rich and full string sound. This technique was taken into account with the development of the modern piano."

Thanks for all that, jasperiscool! And for those who are wondering, here are the notes used in each chime, these are listed on the box each chime comes in.
Terra: G C E F G C E G
Aqua: A D F G A D F A
Aria: A C E A B C E B
Ignis: G B D G B D G A

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