As poor old John-Seb had this great pipe organ in front of him and had to write a new piece every week, what was he supposed to promote, 12 pipe organs in matching major / minor couplings in every church in just temperament?
Well he could have followed the example of the famous Brothers of St. Kilda, who because of the colour of their habits were universally known as "The Blue Brothers" (contemporary chroniclers referred to them as "the B.B." for short). In 1538 they built a pipe organ with adjustable pipes, so that it could modulate into any key. The smaller ones could be moved by hand, lubricated by goose grease, but the larger ones need all manner of mechanical contrivances and whole teams of monks to move them. Each pipe had a monk dedicated to its tuning, so in order to preserve their highly-tuned ears they were a silent order.
There was one, known as the "Blind Bro" who conceived the idea of changing the pitch of the pipes during the playing of a piece. He drilled the teams of monks using sign language with such authority that he became known as the "B.B. King" amongst outsiders. He wrote a piece specially to show off this pitch-changing idea and during rehearsals, because of the posture of the monks, the movable notes became known as "Bent Notes". Many dignitaries were invited to the concert, and all went well until they came to a short passage of a dozen bars or so involving the tonic, sub-dominant and dominant chords when the pipes for the third and seventh notes became stuck down. The music came out in a strange new and unsettling manner.There was also a build-up of pressure which in turn caused a rupture in the system. The air in the organ expanded rapidly causing a noticeable drop in temperature in the room. The more conservative members of the audience, especially the ecclesiastical hierarchy were horrified by this believing it to be "Devil's Music" , but the younger brothers liked the way the music made them feel cool.
The organ was shut down immediately and fell into disuse. In fact it fell into the sea in a violent Atlantic storm. Blind Bro and his young followers were expelled from the monastery and left St. Kilda eventually finding a place where they could continue to play their new kind of music. It is believed they settled on what we now call the "Mississippi Delta". They didn't have an organ, of course, so played what instruments came to hand. The music was known loaclly as "The Blues' Music". The possessive case apostrophe was soon dropped, of course.
Blind Bro outlived all his companions and continued to live alone playing his own innovative style of music. He abandoned his indiviual identity and was simply known as "The Loneliest Monk". You may have heard of him under that name.
