Homage to Jorgensen

Much of the information in this website is cheerfully lifted from Owen Jorgensen's monumental tome, Tuning: Containing The Perfection of Eighteenth-Century Temperament; The Lost Art of Nineteenth-Century Temperament; and The Science of Equal Temperament. To save space, I have summarized Jorgensen's wording and decided in many places to eliminate quotation marks and just admit at the outset that much of what's here is taken from his book. Each image contains a citation for the source of the information, often a page in Jorgensen.

I must say that as a professional organizer of information, I am staggered by the amount of research that Jorgensen managed to capture. It is regrettable that the book has gone out of print. My effort here should be thought of as a supplement to Jorgensen. There may be places where I have misinterpreted the data, and I take full responsibility for that.

There are temperaments here that you will not find in Jorgensen: Coleman, Bailey, Koval, Wendell, Secor, Di Veroli, Bremmer, and Jorgensen's own improvement on Prinz/Kirnberger. There are also alternate viewpoints, and I have recently (2019) started to supplement Jorgensen's work with others. In each case I have made comments drawn from personal emails or website postings. Again, if I have misrepresented anything, please let me know and I will promptly fix it.

You may download a nowhere near current PDF file (9/29/06) of these charts here. This is a large file, over 6 MB, so expect it to take a while in 2006 internet speeds. Should go way faster in 2019! I'll update this after I've finished ther current upgrade of the site.