Rating: 
Summary: Over Blown and Out of Tune
Review: Too many sweeping claims unsubstantiated. Too much gushing and waxing poetical. A dissappointing romantic and culturally biased performance. If, however, you believe that all other music is inferior to Western musical culture because we have the tempered scale, and that Western music is the pinnacle of human accomplishment (and, yes, Martha, we can lump Wagner and Destiny's Child together for this one), you will find this book very comforting.
Rating: 
Summary: Enlightening, entertaining and a great read
Review: Unlike the previous reviewer, I was thoroughly engaged by this book. The author takes the reader on a fascinating time-machine journey, from Pythagoras to Descartes to Newton. The point of the book is not so much to argue for a particular way of tuning as it is to point out the radical change in thought that music made in parallel to other areas, whether political or scientific, e.g., the tuning of the piano and its relation to the String Theory in physics.
I was puzzled by the previous reviewer's inability to appreciate the anecdotal asides: da Vinci strumming his self-made fiddle; the arguments Galileo and his father had with the music establishment of their time; Giardano Bruno being burned alive at the stake as a heretic. And all of this is told with what I take to be a wry sense of humor. Distractions? That's what makes this book so damn interesting! This book is a romp in a way that you can't anticipate when picking up non-fiction.
Absolutely enjoyable and intriguing. I loved it.
Rating:
Summary: A well researched disappointment
Review: When I first saw this book, I was delighted to think that someone had written a book devoted to one of my favourite topics, that of temperament. Unfortunately, upon reading this book I was greatly saddened by it.For all of the meticulous research done for this book, with all of its discussions of different temperaments, I cannot fathom how the author came upon the opinion that this "equal temperament" as some ultimate solution. I even have to question whether or not he has ever actually listened to any of these temperaments which he dismisses as "ugly and uneven" in comparison. I have never before seen anyone deny the improvement in sound of just intonation over tempered tuning. Perhaps the author has indeed heard some of these "ugly" temperaments, but years of piano playing had left him with a distaste for every pitch that falls between the keys in his mind. I am very sorry to relay my disappointment in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed Reasoning
Review: While I haven't read the book and wouldn't buy it, I was made aware of it by another piano technician who practices the Historical Temperaments as I do. After hearing of Isacoff's premise and reading the excerpt provided by Amazon.com, I can only say that this writing feeds what many consider to be a conspiracy of disinformation. My experience of 33 years as a piano technician who has NEVER tuned a piano in Equal Temperament scince 1989, is that the ideal, perfectly equalized scale of a piano is virtually unsupportable and therefore never has truly existed. It has only been believed in. In fact, the most common rendering on the modern piano, even from many so-called "concert" piano technicians is a backwards version of a Well Tempered Tuning which has come to be known as Reverse Well. ... The truth is that only a very few of the most highly skilled piano technicians can tune a true Equal Temperament and most of those are aided by an Electronic Tuning Device because doing it by ear is so very precarious and difficult. Increasingly, piano technicians, users and listeners are finding that even when this state of supposed perfection is attained, it is not the best or most musically appropriate sound for any kind of music from Bach to Bacherach.
Rating:
Summary: Promise unfulfilled
Review: While much of the material would have to be rated "extremely interesting", it would also have to be rated "largely irrelevant" to the topic at hand. While it's essential to be reminded of the historical contexts in which the development of various tuning systems developed, I, for one, was expecting more of a well structured focus on the tuning systems themselves, and not an anecdotal one volume compendium of European and Oriental cultural and religious history with an occasional digression into tuning systems themselves. That being said, the occasional actual discussion of tuning is quite well done and accessible to the non-specialist. I also expected that the author would have had a more balanced approach to the issues of tuning as they relate to various groups of instruments and their copmbinations into ensembles, and not such complete focus on the tuning of the keyboard instruments and mainly harpsichord and piano at that. At one point Mr Isacoff makes the point that the organ can be less tolerant of the small adjustments made to achieve an "equal temper" than the piano, but then doesn't follow up on this opportunity. There is almost no mention of the issues of tuning that apply to the brass and woodwind instruments. I would recommend the book highly to a student of history, or to someone wanting to casually "dip into" the subject, but not to someone who was seriously interested in the topic of temperament itself.
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