The Well Tempered Clavichord

We think of heaven as a place of music where all is harmony. In contrast Babylon means disharmony, chaos and confusion.

In playing we go to great effort to be harmonious, to keep well tuned.

But, there is a very strange phenomenon in the science of music that shows the best harmony we can produce is mathematically flawed. All of nature is under a curse. There are weeds in the flower garden, there are insects with deadly poison, one animal lives by tearing, killing and eating another, and mankind is more ready to follow the ways of sin, vice and cruelty than stay on God's narrow way of righteousness, even though they know full well that the latter leads to heaven and life, while the former leads to death and hell.

True, you say, but why is music flawed like other elements on this earth?

About two hundred years ago, men began to grow beyond the simple harps and flutes or former centuries, inventing the harpsichord, a complicated harp-like instrument with mechanical devices so that by striking a key, a string would be plucked, thus making it possible to play many notes o\at once, or chords.

Incidentally, the early instrument with a keyboard had the black and white keys, but the colors were reversed. When I went to visit the church and touch the keyboard of Handel, his keyboard was of the old style, black and white in reverse, but it didn't seem to hinder him any when he was composing "The Hallelujah Chorus." I wonder if I painted a piano keyboard"s black keys white, and vice versa, I could play better music.

Musicians found that they could tune their instruments by taking, for instance, a C and a G and get a perfect fifth. In physics this was found to be a ratio of 3\2. Untuned, the interval would be harsh with many vibrations, but at exactly 2\2 it would smooth out into vibration-free harmony. Then taking that G one could choose the next fifth, D, and do likewise, and continue the 12 steps through each of the 12 different notes of the scale or octave. Then, marvelous to discover, it brought one back to the original starting point, C. Only, it did not, not exactly. Something funny somewhere or imperfectly tuned?

Inventors and musicians worked and studied earnestly a long time to resolve the problem and develop a perfect mathematical model to follow for their real instruments. For a time, they tuned an instrument perfectly for playing in one key alone, and when they wanted another key, they had to retune.

They finally gave up and accepted the realm of music and harmony was flawed on this earth, even as all nature was.

They had to tune their intervals of a fifth, imperfectly, leaving it flat, allowing a wave or vibrato to enter, one wave each two seconds or four seconds depending on the octave.

Bach was so pleased with this solution or invention that he wrote a whole series of Fugues, one Fugue in each key to practice, play and illustrate how it could be done. These marvelous compositions are still played by every concert pianist. Organs were, and are, also tuned the same way. There is no alternative. We compose and play more or less harmoniously, as long as we admit there are some things that cannot be perfect this side of heaven.

Many poems and songs have been written about how Jesus can mend the broken string and give us a song again. An old battered violin in the Master's hand can play sweet music again. He will put that old sweet song into our hearts again.