From what one knows about it, it was tuned in something very close to
E31, with some keys added perhaps to give better pure fifths. Then E31
is very close to the Renaissance popular (extended) meantone tuning
system which sets the major third to 5/4 (so the major second is sqrt(5/4)).
So my guess is that it wasn't intended for any particular Renaissance
music, but just to give better harmonic convergence.
I made a program by which extended meantone and other diatonic tuning
systems can be played on the typing keyboard using ChucK
<http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu/>. - It is easy to define new ones.
Here is an article:
http://sonic-arts.org/td/schulter/vicentino.htm
Hans
Trabaci was probably the most important composer for it.
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Reference? Cf.
http://tinyurl.com/nuqu36
Hans
Note that "meantone" is a choice of 12 notes per octave from "extended
meantone", which produces a jump in the chromatic tonesteps, the "wolf".
This limits the number of playable keys, as one wants to avoid the wolf.
Trabaci modulated to distant keys, fitting better with instruments with
more notes per octave, though the reference said he wrote for 19-note
per octave instruments.
But the problem is the cutting down of the extended meantone, which can
be avoided by using keyboard layouts that do not do that. A
two-dimensional layout can avoid this problem entirely. Then it is easy
to switch between different tuning systems. The pure fifths will though
be off in such tunings.
Hans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meantone_temperament#Extended_meantones