The Music of Hindostan c18.11

c18.11

And, lastly, would not this suggestion defeat its own end—the preservation of just tuning—and lead after all straight to the accursed thing, Equal Temperament? For as soon as harmony came to be valued for its own sake it would be impossible not to feel an enormous difference between, say, a major and a minor chord. If then, closing on a (in Imankaliān), the composer had nothing but an a minor triad and a second inversion at his disposal, could he resist the forbidden a db e, which is so near and yet so far? And if the db would not do, would it be long before he altered it—and then chaos?