ABSTRACT
A survey of representative collections of sixteenth-century keyboard music shows broad patterns in the uses or thirds, fifths and octaves in final chords. The presence of thirds in the finals of Italian and English keyboard works relatively early in the sixteenth century, and the apparent avoidance of open fifths in England, suggest that tunings with pure thirds, like quarter-comma meantone or, more plausibly, informal aural tunings resulting in much the same, were already in common use in those regions. Although the earliest-known mathematically rigorous exposition of quarter-comma mean tone was published by Gioseffo Zarlino, shortly thereafter the Spanish organist Francisco de Salinas claimed priority for the invention of this tuning during his time in Rome. Aaron's apparent description of quarter-comma mean tone and the strong advocacy of this temperament shortly in Costanzo Antegnati's L'Arte organica and Michael Praetorius's Syntagma musicum II: De Organographia span most of the sixteenth century.
