Andreas Werckmeister

Andreas Werckmeister (November 30, 1645 – October 26, 1706) was a German organist, music theorist, and composer of the Baroque era.

This important step toward equal temperament was highly influential to the harmonic basis underlying much of subsequent Western music.

Of his compositions only a booklet remains: pieces for violin with basso continuo, with the title Musikalische Privatlust (1689).

The system distributes 1/4 of the comma to the four fifths G–D, D–A, A–E, and B–F♯, leaving the others as pure 3:2 ratios; this tended toward somewhat wider thirds than in equal temperament.

According to George Buelow, "No other writer of the period regarded music so unequivocally as the end result of God’s work".