It might be worth putting that little bit into its context (where the quoted passage occurs at the end of p. 3):

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/WilliamsTuning.pdf

Needless to say (and pace Dr Williams) Bach does not mention any note names at all (whether C-D-E or D-E-F). He merely uses the age-old Guidonian terms ut-re-mi and re-mi-fa - these being the solmization terms indicating rising notes following the respective patterns of a) tone-tone, and b) tone-semitone. (Hence we see first the arrival of a major third, and second a minor third.) None of this has the slightest connection with temperament, and few of us will now be inclined to be misled by Dr Williams's irrelevant circumlocution.

Baziron

Actually the paragraph we review comes in the book not from page 3 but from page 333, but it is neither unusual nor inappropriate for authors these days to reheat their efforts. And it is of course Mr. Williams's crackpot wheeze of using the "Obituary" as a guide which justifies the mention of his endeavours in this particular thread rather than elsewhere.

But is there not some truth in what he says - that composers are more interested in or concerned with the quality of the scale than in the quality of the key?

But I do not feel, Mrs Kerfoops, that this is what he is saying. I read it as the opposite indeed. He seems (upon my reading) to be asserting that Bach may have been more interested "key" than in "scale".

A "scale" is merely a ladder or staircase (from the Latin scala). It provides the successive steps of the pitch-materials to be used in a musical composition. As such, these steps all need to have a clearly-defined pitch relationship with their neighbours. This relationship depends entirely upon the method used in tuning each step of the ladder. As such, therefore, one is dealing with various methods of tempering.

Now Williams has posited a quite different notion: he suggests "some difficulty in believing that temperament was of vital importance to J. S. Bach", and instead considers that Bach was "more interested in the differences between major and minor". In saying this, Williams is (it seems to me) stating that he believes Bach was less interested in the physical structure of the scale than he was in the differences of tonality and sonority that arise from it (howsoever it may or may not incidentally have been physically constructed).

Now this does not indicate to me that it was Williams's view that Bach (or other composers) were (to quote Mrs Kerfoops) "more interested in or concerned with the quality of the scale than in the quality of the key" - it indicates surely the opposite!

But it is all silly nonsense in any case, so I do not feel we need to concern ourselves further with such idiocy.

Baziron

"There is only a finger's difference between a wise man and a fool." - Diogenes

Baziron