Examples invited on "temperament and musical intervals" outside Western Classical Music

[Fela Sowande: African Suite for Strings; The New 
Symphony Strings; Trevor Harvey, conductor; Decca LM 
4547 (1952)]

The LP recording pictured above has been digitally 
remastered by Michael S. Wright of the United Kingdom.

Michael S. Wright writes:

In addition to my interest in music, I am a long-standing 

member of the Institute of Acoustics, the UK's professional 

body for people qualified in Acoustics.  I am shortly to 

present a paper at the Institute on some aspects of 

temperament and musical intervals. This will be to people 

who will be more qualified in acoustics than music. This 

will be on aspects relating to the use of modern European 

fixed pitch instruments. I gave a somewhat limited 

presentation of some aspects of this a number of years ago. 

From a personal point of view, I have many reservations 

about the use of equal temperament. As with many others 

over the ages, I consider that there is much potential in the 

use of different tonal intervals (equal and non-equal) in 

music. I would be interested to hear about the use of music 

that either use scales that in some way relate to perfect 
fifths or others, including those that may go as far as the 

opposite extreme, e.g. try 13 equally tempered notes to an 

octave!

My long-standing interest in music from the African Diaspora 

now leads me to ask whether you have used, played, have 

interest or have ever considered music outside the current 

so-called European conventions used in 'classical music'. I 

would like to make some mention in my presentation to 

keyboard and other fixed pitch instrumental music. I am not 

going to be talking about any music where tonal variations 

can freely be used. However, I will be accepting the fact 

that the use of electronic instrumentation is often essential 

in order to achieve performance. I will be looking for some 

examples to go alongside those I already have from around

the world.

I welcome any information and will acknowledge all 

responses.

Best wishes

Mike

Michael S. Wright
mike@isaamnet.org