Concertina Design Brief

[goran rahm]

Sorry......GR:"the doubling of 3rd and 5th notes"

too hasty....'the doubling of the sharps of...." ....'

 

GR

[goran rahm]

wrong again! ..as is D#/Eb G#/Ab in C...:-)

[JimLucas]

Another indication that mean tone temperament was NOT guiding the keyboard design is that NOT A WORD is said about it in the patent(s) !

Immediately after I suggest that the use of mean tone temperament could have been a deliberate development conceived after his first patent, you try to claim that its not appearing in the patent is evidence against my suggestion? Göran, you are bizarre! You leave me wondering whether you understand what the words "before" and "after" mean.

 

Nor is there any reason why it should appear as a claim in his later patent, when it had already been in production for several years. Most other developments during that and subsequent periods were also never mentioned in the patents.

 

And please note that I'm not claiming that mean tone temperament did underlie the design of the chromatic English-system keyboard, just that we have no more evidence that it didn't than that it did.

[Paul Groff]

(sorry, message under construction!)

Edited January 13, 2004 by Paul Groff

[Richard Morse]

wrong again! ..as is D#/Eb G#/Ab in C...:-)

Sorry......GR:"the doubling of 3rd and 5th notes" too hasty....'the doubling of the sharps of...." ....'

It would be much more responsive if you would use the "edit and quote" features of this forum.

[ttonon]

In my view there is a slight touch of obsession in the idea...since both the Symphonium and the original Concertina suffer from being a bit too small for

safe and sound production as well as practical management. The attraction of lightness,compactness,portability has gained at the cost of practical musicality.

 

 

Granted, there are complex issues associated with the size of a musical instrument; however, one advantage I can see that develops as the size of the symphonium decreases is the ability of embouchure to affect the musical tone. I can also speculate that perhaps the effect of embouchure may have been regarded as a detraction in Wheatstone's time (an attitude I detect even in Goran's quote, above: "..safe and sound production.."). Regardless, am I right about this? When you play a symphonium, is it small enough for the musical tone to be affected by embouchure?

 

Best regards,

Tom

http://www.bluesbox.biz

[goran rahm]

Jim:"Immediately after I suggest that the use of mean tone temperament could have been a deliberate development conceived after his first patent, you try to claim that its not appearing in the patent is evidence against my suggestion? Göran, you are bizarre! You leave me wondering whether you understand what the words "before" and "after" mean."

 

Goran: True:-) I don't see what you mean:-)...You say above that you suggest: "a deliberate development after his first patent" which is exactly what I have said from the start...that the mean tone temperament tuning probably was being 'applied on the keyboard system afterwards'.... I don't mind if you call it bizarre but it still means the same thing....

And still it certainly speaks against 'the hypothesis that the keyboard was designed for the mean tone temperament' that

1) not a word is said about that (1829)

2) the keyboard explicitely was based on the diatonic scale divided on two rows each side. Later (page 5) "the modes in which semitonesmaybe introduced,when necessary". "When it is only required to introduce one or two..." a mechanism is showed not indicating what semitones are introduced. (This mechanism hardly works by the way) Later on again he says: "When another semitone is required to be introduced ...another bar or rod....is to be employed". Later on:"When however a great number of semitones are to be introduced, I can employ....represented in figure 25." now: "There are consequently four parallell rows of finger studs..." "but the key of E flat is here represented instead of the key of C"

Later on page 6 he describes a manner of making a "chromatic instrument" without using extra "studs" (buttons) but by acting on a transverse pin on each "stud". This arrangement of course excludes the use of mean tone temperament tuning as with the four row system.

 

Jim:"it had already been in production for several years. Most other developments during that and subsequent periods were also never mentioned in the patents."

 

Goran: You mean the Concertina? Has nothing to do with it...the four row 'english' keyboard was in the patent 1929 and 1844 other keyboards were claimed. Nothing said about mean tone temperament in either and all there IS said fits with the assumption of equal temperament tuning. The only complete four row keyboard shown 1829 was in Eb!

 

Jim:"And please note that I'm not claiming that mean tone temperament did underlie the design of the chromatic English-system keyboard, just that we have no more evidence that it didn't than that it did."

 

Goran: And my original comment was simply to notify that there is nothing to be found supporting the *mean tone temperament design hypothesis* ...BUT I also

do mean that the descriptions in the 1829 patent speak against that hypothesis.

 

It would be interesting to hear if Stephen has made any trials to sort out the tuning of the instruments and getting the "chromatic" device working (if present) ..which I doubt.....

 

Goran Rahm

[goran rahm]

Tom:"Granted, there are complex issues associated with the size of a musical instrument; however, one advantage I can see that develops as the size of the symphonium decreases is the ability of embouchure to affect the musical tone. I can also speculate that perhaps the effect of embouchure may have been regarded as a detraction in Wheatstone's time (an attitude I detect even in Goran's quote, above: "..safe and sound production.."). Regardless, am I right about this? When you play a symphonium, is it small enough for the musical tone to be affected by embouchure?"

 

Goran: Can't say....from my own trials the Symphonium could be regarded as generally unplayable:-)....but Stephen may have tried harder....

 

Tom, when I spoke about "safe and sound production" I meant the concertina.

Wheatstone says about the keyboard that it was firstly meant to be easier to reach than a straight layout of notes which obviously had been applied on 'mouth-organs' at the time and that portability was an aim and concerning the buttons:

" so placing them with respect to their distances and positions as that they may singly be....touched or pressed down by the first and second fingers of each hand without the fingers interfering with the adjacent studs, and yet be placed so near together as that two adjacent studs may be simultaneously pressed down when required by the same finger"

 

Goran Rahm

[JimLucas]

....from my own trials the Symphonium could be regarded as generally unplayable:-)....

Göran, from the above and your frequent descriptions of your difficulty in playing concertinas, I consider it doubtful that you are a competent player of any musical instrument, and I would therefore conclude that it is not the instruments that are deficient.