mean tonen.
/ˈmiːn ˌtəʊn/, U.S. /ˈmin ˈˌtoʊn/ Music.
(As two words or hyphenated.) Either of the two equal intervals of a whole tone into which a major third may be divided, used as a basis for tuning keyboard instruments before the general adoption of equal temperament.Mean-tone tuning, in regular use from the 15th to the 19th centuries, enabled keyboard instruments to be played in more keys than the previously used Pythagorean and just intonation tunings. It existed in various forms, depending on the size of the major third so divided.
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mean tone1799
1799 T. Young in Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 90 150 The system of mean tones, the sistema participato of the old Italian writers, still frequently used in tuning organs.
1864 A. J. Ellis in Proc. Royal Soc. 13 408 This is known as the System of Mean Tones, or the Mesotonic System, as it will be here termed.
1979 Early Music 7 567/2 The two harpsichords are.., tuned about a semitone below today's pitch and with enough of mean-tone about the temperament to induce a slight malaise in the F sharp minor Suite.
1988 Organbuilder May 8/1 The correspondence between the average of these six organs and Sixth-Comma Mean-tone is amazingly exact.
Compounds
General attributive, as mean-tone interval, mean-tone system, mean-tone temperament, etc.
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1881 J. Broadhouse Student's Helmholtz 354 Mean tone temperament was perfected by Salinas, a.d. 1577.
1884 J. Lecky in G. Grove Dict. Music IV. 72 It will be convenient to take equal temperament as the standard of comparison, and to measure the meantone intervals by the number of equal Semitones they contain... In the meantone system the interval G♯—E♭ is sharper than the perfect Fifth by nearly one-third of a Semitone.
1896 A. J. Hipkins Descr. & Hist. Pianoforte 103 To extend Mesotonic or Mean tone tuning to the keys of E flat and A flat major.
1948 Amer. Math. Monthly 55 546 The meantone temperament is a regular system in which the fifth (3/2) is flatted by 1/4 syntonic comma, and the major third is pure (5/4).
1979 Early Music 7 493/1 Furthermore, late renaissance and early baroque music originally associated with mean-tone systems is often quite effective (albeit anachronistic) in well-tempered tuning, because the keys most commonly used have what amounts to mean-tone-variant intonation anyway.
1989 E. M. Ripin et al. Early Keyboard Instruments App. 245 A mean-tone temperament in its most restricted sense refers to a tuning with pure major 3rds divided into two equal whole tones (hence ‘mean’-tone).
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, March 2001; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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