Your earlier statements about traditional music not modulating and rarely even making it to the dominant only proves to me, as I interpret it, that they were aware of the limitations of the scale they were using. They knew spanning the octave was going to go out of tune and knew it was not a desirable thing.

Where did that come from? There is quite a bit of traditional music that goes way beyond the octave. First-position fiddle does two octaves and a third, flutes and whistles about the same using only basic technique. Range doesn't have anything to do with intonation.

One reason for the limited use of tonal modulation in traditional music is that it's very hard to sing wildly modulating tunes without an accompaniment providing a pitch reference. Listening to somebody at a singaround trying to do a 1930s Tin Pan Alley or Stephen Sondheim number with even that degree of chromaticism as an unaccompanied solo is not always a pleasurable experience, and there is no way something like the Liebestod from Tristan or the Song of the Wood Dove from Gurrelieder could have been transmitted in oral tradition. Not all traditional music is essentially connected to vocal melody, but most of Western Europe's is.


Again, I believe they would have tuned in 12-TET had it been available to them.

In case you hadn't noticed, traditional music has not died out, and traditional fiddlers (anywhere, any idiom) don't care about the circle of fifths. And mouth organ manufacturers manage to shift millions of instruments tuned in some sort of meantone every year.


You know, sports fans, if you just want to sing folk songs and ballads (or put tunes to dirty limericks), and accompany them on the guitar, ukulele, or autoharp, you don't really need to know any of this stuff. Just tune your instrument to a halfway decent pitch-pipe or an electronic tuner (preferable), do your thing, and let the nit-pickers go ahead and argue in the corner.

What you can perform that way is the core of traditional music, and it helps to respect it.