Dear Mr. Zapf,

It seems a bit hasty to jump to the conclusion the Brad Lehman is a
plagiarist. In some countries, without sufficient evidence, this amounts to
libel. History has shown that co-discovery is a very real phenomenon; the
case of Newton and Leibniz co-discovering the calculus being perhaps the most
famous. Certainly both Mr. Sparschuh and Mr. Lehman can coexist and both have
insights into the question of Bach's tuning, many of which might share the
same general flavor, or same general conclusions.

Although it might be lamentable that Mr. Lehman chose not to mention Mr.
Sparschuh's work, there are several reasons that one might explain this
before one feels it necessary to slander Mr. Lehman. For starters, it might
be just plain paranoia about precedence, jealousy, or genuine disagreement or
lack of regard for his work. All of this can happen quite naturally without a
shred of willful plagiary. And one doesn't have to particularly *like* Mr.
Lehman to see that we are talking about general people princples here.

You haven't definitively proven anything below against Mr. Lehman; what you
say amounts to circumstantial and loose arguments that seem very emotionally
based, as if you bear a personal grudge against Mr. Lehman. Rather, at least
in this scenario, you revealed yourself to be in poor taste to not handle
this matter in private. Not only is this potentially libelous, but it is
basically pretty poor behavior to try to publicly embarrass or humiliate a
colleague, no matter what your personal grudge(s) against them might be.
Ironically,you also realize that you publically open yourself and your
motives up for scrutiny as well.

A grave injustice has been done against Bradley and his character; you appear
to have acted here as judge, jury, and executioner, and, well, without
evidence of any kind except that you find Mr. Lehman strikes you as being a
bit sneaky, it is rather alarming.

Regards,
Aaron.

On Saturday 25 June 2005 9:13 am, Michael Zapf wrote:
> Dear Francis,
>
> in the latest ‚Clavichord International’, you as the
> editor of the publication announce that for the
> November issue “Dr. Bradley Lehman is also writing an
> article for us on his exciting and controversial
> discovery of ‘the’ Bach temperament (discussed in two
> articles in Early Music this year)”. In the Clavichord
> Yahoogroup whose owner-moderator I am, and whose
> member Brad Lehman has been since 1998, I had on
> January 24, 2001 outlined that Andreas Sparschuh of
> Germany had made this discovery back in 1998. Andreas
> had written a long article with extensive mathematical
> and theoretical work which appeared in the German
> Mathematicians’ Association 1999 yearbook, and he had
> earned the Golden Tuning Fork Award of the German
> Tuners’ Association for it. So anything Bradley could
> have “discovered” was an alternate solution to the
> Sparschuh hypothesis. That he dismisses Andreas as
> somebody who only has a “vague idea” on his private
> homepage in my opinion is a disrespectful way of
> presenting his own work as the first scientific effort
> on this theme. This, and his complete omission of
> Andreas Sparschuh’s name and discovery in the Early
> Music article makes him a plagiarizer, nothing less. I
> have long been silent on this issue, because my own
> role, apart from presenting a dissenting opinion on
> the Sparschuh Tuning, was the one of the distributor
> of Andreas’ discovery to a music world that does not
> read mathematical yearbooks in Hun language, and my
> position as the moderator of the Clavichord Group
> forbade a strong intervention on my own behalf. But I
> must urge you as the publisher of Clavichord
> International to employ the necessary due diligence of
> at least presenting the facts, and not repeat
> Bradley’s and Early Music’s mistake of omitting
> Andreas’ work and opinion.
> I am sending this as an open letter to both the Tuning
> and the Clavichord Yahoogroups, as an effort to pay
> justice to a kind German mathematician who isn’t a
> member of either of them.
> Michael
> N.B. In case you want to get in contact with Andreas,
> his e-mail address is in the CC section of this mail.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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