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Dear Jim, I don't have the last word on this subject and am working to clear up my confusion also, but this may help. One of many excellent references on tuning and temperament (but with an emphasis on keyboard instruments such as pianos, harpsichords, clavichords, and organs) is "Tuning," by O. Jorgensen (1991, MSU Press, E. Lansing, Mich.). I don't treat this reference as infallible but it is a major work. The history of tunings through the last few hundred years is a complex subject; very notable sources have published seemingly authoritative statements on the subject that turned out to be wrong (Wim Wakker lists one example elsewhere in this forum), and the final story has yet to be (will never be?) written. Most of us who received introductory music lessons of some kind in the 20th century have been taught a vocabulary/set of concepts that actually makes it harder to understand the music of the nineteenth century and before. One example is the entry under "enharmonic" in the New Harvard Dictionary of Music; the author's point of view is so centered in the "equal temperament" paradigm that you could easily come to the false conclusion that "enharmonics" are/were ALWAYS the same pitch. Enharmonics (such as the two notes of the pair D#/Eb) were assigned different pitches in meantone temperaments. In fact, Quantz introduced "enharmonic" keys for the transverse flute so that D# and Eb could more easily be given different pitches (each note having its own key), much as I believe Wheatstone did in his english concertina fingering system. In the paradigm of equal temperament, enharmonics are "different names for the same pitch," and in the "well temperaments" there is only one pitch for the two notes D# and Eb, but it might not be centered between D and E. D# and G# in the sharp keys and Eb and Ab ih the flat keys are simply the first enharmonics you have to deal with when you center the circle of fiths in the natural notes ("white keys" of the piano - or early english): D# - G# - C# - F# - B - E - A - D - G - C - F - Bb - Eb - Ab (the 14 tones of the english tina) Meantone temperaments are so called because the fifth intervals are tempered, that is, they are not assigned the pitches that would make them acoustically pure or "just." These fifth intervals are slightly tempered in equal temperament ("narrow" by about 2 cents from just) but in equal temperament the fifths are pretty good. String players sometimes take care not to tune their open strings in pure fifths, but I suspect many traditional fiddlers use these slightly wider untempered fifths of just intonation, so that if their A was right on their E would be sharp relative to equal temperament, their D flat, and their G flatter. The discrepancy with equal temperament may not be noticeable to some. In the meantone temperament that is most commonly discussed, (1/4 comma meantone), the fifths are much narrower than in equal temperament (around 5.4 cents from just) and beat noticeably. However, the major thirds are pure (just) in 1/4 comma meantone, and differ greatly from the harshly beating wide thirds of equal temperament (about 13.7 cents wide from just). These sweet untempered thirds of 1/4 comma meantone provide a very beautiful harmony unfamiliar to many modern ears. Especially since harmonies in thirds are so natural to the english concertina, and since free reeds have harmonics that make the wide major thirds of equal temperament particularly unmusical in the mid to upper register, I would like to see every english concertinist experiment with 1/4 comma meantone temperament at some stage in their education (see post by Allan Atlas who uses both). Many will find that on their equal tempered instruments they have developed a habit of playing fifth intervals, which do sound harsher in meantone. Mr. Wakker suggests one of many compromises available between these two alternatives. Wim, I know Young's tuning is well-deocumented for keyboards but have you actually recorded this from a period english concertina? Your statement that it was "used in the nineteenth century" is ambiguous on this point. To close (for now), I and others who should know better often use the term "tuning" loosely for a system assigning pitches to named notes. But according to Mr. Jorgensen we should be careful to call every such system a "temperament" if one or more of its natural intervals has been altered from just or acoustically pure. So there is equal temperament (ours divides the octave into 12 equal parts, but one could also have a 10 tone equal temperament, etc.), 1/4 comma meantone temperament in which the fifths but not the major thirds are tempered, etc. Jorgensen only uses the noun "tuning" in this context to refer to just (untempered) scales, or to the results of a tuner's work. (See his glossary, and extended discussions under each of the scales). Jim, you are a pioneer in the concertina revival and we all owe you so much for scavenging and preserving the instruments and fostering new players. There are other great collectors out there as well who got a jump on the current market. All of you are in the best position to help us learn more about the original pitches and scales of the old machines, as most of today's players have only one and immediately retune it to modern standards. I await more dialog (and corrections, I'm sure!) --Paul

FOLKS: as a footnote of sorts to the discussion about the relationship between tuning (meantone) and layout of buttons. . . . . . . .someone mentioned that not all early concertinas had the duplicate buttons for A flat/G sharp and E flat/D sharp. . . . . . .and the question was raised about how that would affect, if at all, the tuning system. . . . . . . . . went through some old notes yesterday. . . . . . .and can report that Wheatstone treble concertina No. 500. . . . . . .sold to the music dealer Chappell and intended for delivery to one Mrs. Baillie has a detailed note in place of the usual reference to the number of buttons. . . . . . .the note reads: "g to c, without A flat and E flat". . . . . .now, i have never seen No. 500 (does anyone out there own it. . . .is it one of the concertinas in the Horniman Museum???). . . . . . so i don't know how many buttons it had. . . . . .but in the early 1840s one finds many concertinas being sold with 44 buttons. . . . . . . yet to omit all A flats and E flats would have meant -- and i calculate from the "standard" 48-button instrument (though there really was no "standard" yet in the early '40s) -- leaving out five buttons (not four), since the very highest A flat is not there anyway. . . . . . be all this as it may: it is still not exactly clear what effect the lack of A flats and E flats would have had on the tuning. . . . . . . .we don't know (at least i don't know) how the G sharps and D sharps were tuned. . . . . . and how, therefore, they would have sounded in pieces written in B-flat and E-flat major, for example. . . . . . .this leads to another question: just what music had already been conceived specifically for the concertina by this time (early '40s) and in what keys were the pieces written . . . . .it is difficult to date music from this period, since publishers generally did not include the date on the music itself. . . . . obviously, they cited themselves and gave their address (which can often help date the music, since publishers often moved around). . . . . . .most of the time, we can only go by the date of deposit in Stationers Hall or the date of acquisition in what is now the British Library. . . . . . however, there is no guarantee that these dates correspond precisely with the date of publication (though the best guess is that they generally did. . . . . .a very reliable guide to dating is advertising, since one doesn't advertise what one doesn't have for sale). . . . . . . assuming all this: the pickings were still pretty slim in the early 1840s. . . . . .even pieces that we know had been performed by this time -- for instance, Joseph Warren's (and he's a fascinating guy) "Grand Fantasia on a theme from Bellini's Norma", which Regondi premiered at the Birmingham Festival in 1837 (and with which he sort of put the concertina "on the map") -- were not, according to the British Library acquisition date, published until later. . . . . presumably when the consumer market had increased in size. . . . . . all in all, there is much that we don't know. . . . . . .and recognizing this is the beginning of wisdom................allan

For James Pamondon: James, haven't seen a recent post. Don't get discouraged. I, for one, have enjoyed your postulations and the responses they have evoked. I've learned about meantone tuning in the past week and been introduced to the scholarly research of Professor Atlas as a result of your questions and musings. We need the both the question askers and answer givers in this forum.

Here's the text of a message I posted last March on rec.music.makers.squeezebox: | Let's see if I can explain this. | | First of all, "meantone" tuning is not a single specific tuning, | but a class of related tunings. What they all have in common is | that they tend to keep thirds in tune in the most used keys. They | do this by distributing an error called the "syntonic comma" among | the thirds of uncommon keys. They differ by just how they | distribute it. | | The syntonic comma is the interval difference between two notes | which would be the same in equal temperament, namely the note four | perfect fifths above a reference note and the note two octaves and | a third above it. | | The first is calculated as 3/2 x 3/2 x 3/2 x 3/2 = 5.0625 | The second is calculated as 2 x 2 x 5/4 = 5.0000 | | The error ratio, 5.0625/5.0000 = 1.0125 or about 21.4 cents is | the syntonic comma. It is the ratio of frequencies that has to be | "swept under the rug" by hiding it in intervals rarely used while | playing in common keys. | | Some other things that all meantone systems have in common are | that wherever in the scale a run of three notes are all separated | by whole steps (C, D, E, for example) the middle one is exactly | halfway between the others, hence the name "meantone." Also, | diatonic semitones are always larger than chromatic semitones, | that is, the interval between F# and G is larger than the interval | between Gb and G. | | I hope that clears everything up.

Tom, I was vaguely familiar with the notion of alternative tuning systems but unfamiliar with the term "meantone tuning" until I found this interesting set of web pages: Musical Tuning and Temperaments It includes a "musical calculator" that shows vividly how much various tuning systems deviate from the theoretical ideal. (The text says the calculator also generates tones so you can hear the differences, but so far I can't get this to work on my Mac.)

I think that this is a fascinating discussion. But I really have no idea as to what the terms "meantone" etc. mean. I think it might be helpful to explain to those of us with limited understanding of musical jargonomics. Thanks -- Tom

Allan: The steel reeds are probably original, unless it has a mix of steel and brass. Steel reeds were not that uncommon in the 1850s. To find a concertina with all the reeds replaced is rare. If your meantone instrument has been revalved and ‘fine tuned’ during its life, chances are that the meantone(ish) tuning it has now is not the original. There have been several meantone systems in use over the years: Mersenne (2 variations) Meantone with 2 sharp fifths, etc.. If someone tuned it during the late 19th/early 20th century chances are that it has strong ‘equal temperament’ aspects. Tuners used to ‘up date’ the tuning to the present standards.. By the way, they did not use equal temperament during the 19th century. The standard, after/besides meantone was the ‘well tempered’ system of Thomas Young. Young tempering changed during the 19th century, and got more ‘equal’ towards the 20th century. I tuned my 1818 forte piano to the 1799 Young variation, and my 1853 grand to the mid Victorian Young system that was known in England as ‘Broadwood’s best’ (used till the late 1870s). I assume mid Victorian concertinas were also tuned to this variation. I tune early concertinas (pre 1850) in meantone, and instruments up to 1860 in Young. It really makes a difference. Young gives a lot more ‘color’ than equal tuning. Equal temperament was considered extremely boring in those days. I am sure you know of the ‘famous’ mistake in the Grove Dictionary, which, I believe in one of the earliest editions, mentioned that Bach used this ‘equal temperament’ for his Well tempered Klavier… wim

Sorry, in my previous post the word "meantone" should have been omitted after the words "Society of Arts." I'm afraid I still am not used to composing online.

I agree with Mr. Elliott about retunings during the playing life of Victorian english concertinas. Every "time capsule" early brass reeded english concertina I have seen (Wheatstone or Scates labels, dating from 1850's or earlier) --and by this I mean the ones that have seen little play and no repairs -- seems to have originally been in 1/4 comma meantone with Eb/D# and G#/Ab enharmonics that are appropriate to the 14-tone version of that temperament. Of course, this is always a sort of archaeological judgement as there are inevitably a few notes that have drifted due to corrosion or overuse, and the revalving will always affect the tuning. However, the duplicate press and draw notes and the multiple octaves of each note make such judgements possible, if not indisputable. However, I have also seen such early instruments that have been back to Wheatstones for steel reeds and that were retuned to equal temperament (either then or subsequently), at pitches from ca. A 440 to around A 446 (Society of Arts meantone?). I also have in my shop a medium quality Wheatstone 48, originally in brass reeds, with a few period steel replacement tongues; if memory serves it is in roughly A 446 or A447 meantone (including the steel tongues which were tuned to match the brass ones), possibly indicating that a well-played instrument could sometimes have been kept in meantone as it was repaired. Actually I also agree almost entirely with Mr Atlas' posts on this subject (today, but elsewhere in the forum). However I think it very reasonable to infer that an instrument like the early Wheatstone 48, clearly designed with 14 "keys" (buttons or studs) to the octave, in an era when keyboard tuners were lamenting the absence of 14 keys to the octave on their instruments, and of which the cleanest early examples are tuned with 14 TONES to the octave, was designed around 14-tone 1/4 comma meantone. If I correctly understand the analogy, I accept Mr. Atlas' point that it is a "chicken and egg" question whether Wheatstone's use of the meantone tuning system or his fingering system came "first." I contend they came together, that is, his use of the 14 button/octave fingering coincided with his use of meantone. I don't think this contradicts the claim that meantone tuning was a design constraint of the button layout. To claim otherwise, in my opinion, would require some kind of proof that Wheatstone introduced two extra studs per octave but that they produced redundant pitches. I want to make clear that I am willing to be proved wrong if someone can provide this evidence. As in archaeology, we have to keep an open mind as new evidence and new interpretations come up. But others before me (including Montagu as I have mentioned) have made the inference and I think it is reasonable. I have called Mr. Atlas by his last name out of respect to a colleague I have not met personally (unlike Jim Lucas, who I hope I can count as a friend even if we disagree here). However, if he has no objections I'd be happy to be on a first name basis from here on. _Paul

FOLKS: When giving a lecture-recital, I regularly play on two instruments that date from the mid-1850s. One of these, 6760, has steel reeds (surely not original) and is tuned with equal temperament (probably also not original). The other, 5899, still has both its original brass reeds and its meantone tuning. I strongly suspect that most of the instruments that date from that period and with which we occasionally come into contact were, in fact, tuned in meantone and have since been brought into line with equal temperament. I don't find that at all unsual. Allan

GOOD FOLKS: In recent days, James Plamondon (to whom, in the informal and friendly spirit of this forum, I shall refer to as James) has logged a number of postings that raise interesting questions and issues. I should like to reply to some of them. I. WHY DID THE ENGLISH CONCERTINA LOSE ITS POPULARITY This, of course, is a fascinating question, one for which I doubt there is a single -- or even "best" -- answer. What does seem fairly certain, though, is that it was not because "Victorian England was so racist that the concertina's domination by an Italian virtuoso doomed it" (as James at least suggests). Quite the contrary, Victorian England had something of a love affair with certain aspects of Italian culture, no doubt a residue of the "Grand Tour" syndrome of the eighteenth century. The Victorians particularly prized the great Italian virtuosos, so much so that a number of native English musicians actually banded together to form a short-lived "league" whose aim was to promote native talent. We might also remember that mid- and late-Victorian London was absolutely awash with Italian musicians, particularly voice teachers, the most well-known of whom Sir Paolo Tosti, a native of the Adriatic coastal town of Ortona al Mare, was actually "singing master" to the royal family. As for Regondi in particular (whose nationality, we should remember, is still open to question: was he Italian [Genoa], Swiss [Geneva], or even, as Tom Lawrence would seem to have it, French [Lyons]?): he was viewed with anything but anomosity. In fact, what documentary evidence there is seems to argue that he was adored, both as a performer and as a human being. There is wonderful testimony to this view by Richard Hoffman, a native of England who studied the concertina with Regondi, emigrated to the United States in the 1840s (?), gave what seems to be the first concertina in the United States (in New York) and was the sometimes accompanist for Jenny Lind when she toured in America. In addition, I have argued that it was Regondi who served as the model for Wilkie Collins having placed the concertina in the hands of Count Fosco in his spectacularly successful novel The Woman in White. In all, I fail to find any merit at all in the "racist" argument. James then goes on to wonder if it was a result of the instrument's being "too expensive, so that its popular support. . .was not able to reach [a] critical mass." Here I would argue that if concertina prices had anything to do with the matter at all, they may have worked just the other way around. In other words, the middle and upper classes were drawn to the instrument as long as it was expensive -- and thus rare -- enough to mark those who played it as being somewhat above the "riff raff." Only when the likes of Lachenal and others began mass producing the instrument, thus lowering the prices -- Lachenal, after all, produced his so-called "Peoples Concertina" for just over £1.0.0 -- did its vogue-like appeal began to wither. Why, after all, should Lord This or Lady That (not to mention Countess of This or Marchioness of That) seek an association with an instrument that, as the novelist George Gissing so accurately depicted it at the end of the century, was more customarily association with the working classes? (See Gissing's The Nether World, where he places the instrument in the hands of the despicable Bob Hewett (and otherwise associates it with ruffians), who plays it because he could not afford any other instrument. Finally, while we can seek purely sociological reasons for the instrument's "fall from grace," we should not overlook matters musical. Some year's ago, I presented a lecture-recital in New York. A very well-respected musician came up to me at the end of the presentation and, after saying very nice things about my playing ("toot toot", he mentioned what he considered to be the lack of "tonal/timbral" variety. In a way, he might have a nail on the head. Consider the following remarks about the concertina by the English musician Thomas Attwood (briefly a student of Mozart, with whom he studied counterpoint--note that the counterpoint exercises, with Mozart's alterations, still exist), who seems to have heard the concertina shortly before his death in 1838 (a performance by Regondi?); Attwood's comments are reported by the important Victorian musician and music educator John Hullah (in his Music in the House, 1878), who tells us that the comments represent Attwood's reaction to the instrument over the course of a quarter of an hour: "This [the concertina] is exquisite. . .This will revolutionize the orchestra. . .What can you want with two clarionets when you can have this?. . .This is rather monotonous. . .This certainly wants relief. . .I'm sick of this. . ." On the other hand, the prickly music critic Henry Fothergill Chorley, who liked nothing better than to savage his subjects, had the following to say about the concertina: "The concertina. . . has varieties of tone [my italics] out-numbering those of any wind instrument,--and besides these, a certain talking quality of voice (akin to) the sound of a stringed quartett which " rescues it[the concertina] from such monotony 'as comes over the ear,' after a time, when flute, horn bassoon, oboe, and even clarinet are used for a solo [my italics] (Athanaeum, 28, June 1854). Thus, two sensitive musician/critics -- two very different opinions. In the end, though, I think it might have been the lack of timbral variety (at least that might have been one of the reasons) that -- once the likes of Regondi and Blagrove were finished commissioning the likes of Bernhard Molique, Jules Benedict, George Alexander Macfarren, and John Barnett (and there is no known documentation that would show that Wheatstone & Co. itself was active in this respect) -- prevented the mainstream composers of "art music" from flocking to the English concertina on their own accord. II. MEANTONE TUNING AND LAYOUT OF BUTTONS Despite much ink having been spent on it (especially in this forum), I have yet to see an argument that convincingly resolves the following chicken-and-egg question: did Wheatstone lay out the buttons on the English concertina to meet the demands of meantone tuning, or was it the layout of the buttons that led him to use meantone tuning? What can be said, however, is the following: Wheatstone undoubtedly chose a meantone tuning on the grounds that, when he was developing the instrument in the late 1820s, that was the standard tuning in England, which, conservative in its musical tastes as it was, "lagged behind" developments on the Continent. Thus it was not until the middle of the century (the mid-1840s) that equal temperament became standard "trade usage" on English-built pianos, while organs were still being tuned in one meantone temperament or another well into the 1880s. And that Wheatstone thought in terms of meantone tuning is evident from his so-called "Harmonic Diagram (preserved in the British Library and reproduced in facsimile in my The English Concertina in Victorian England), which is further explained in "An Explanation of the Harmonic Diagram Invented by C. Wheatstone (printed in The Scientific Papers of Sir Charles Wheatstone, pp. 14-20). Here Wheatstone divides the whole tone into both major and minor semitones, and then divides the former into a minor semitone and diesis, the result being the so-called "enharmonic" scale (which attracted the attention of more than a few sixteenth-century Italian humanists who were endeavoring to recreate the musical theory of ancient Greece). And Wheatstone's choice of enharmonic buttons -- E flat/D sharp and A flat/G sharp, with the first note of each pair sounding higher than the second (yes, this strikes us as counterintuitive at first, but be that as it may) -- served a purely practical purpose: it moved the so-called "wolf [that is, out of tune] fifth" to C sharp and A flat(! ! !), and thus permitted the concertina a fairly in-tune modulatory range from E major (on the sharp side) to E-flat major (on the flat side), with keys on either side of which sounding out of tune. James, then, has things exactly backwards. Meantone tuning did not lead to free modulation; rather it restricted it. A few more comments about this matter are in order, though they do not address anything that James posted: 1. Wheatstone paid something of a price for his antiquated (outside England) tuning system. He drew the scorn of no less a musician than Hector Berlioz, who came to know the English concertina owing to his having served as a judge of musical instruments at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Berlioz wrote about Wheatstone's tunings: "se conformant ainsi à la doctrine des acousticiens, doctrine entièrement contraire à la practique des musiciens" (they conform to the doctrine of the acousiticans, a doctrine entirely at odds with the practice of musicians), and this from a musician who, in general, found the sound of the concertina quite pleasing, especially in combination with that of the harp. 2. Somewhere in the exchange about this matter, someone noted that even in the early production of the concertina it was equal temperament -- not meantone tuning -- that must have been the standard, this on the grounds that he or she had seen many early instruments that were in fact equal tempered. I must disagree! What evidence there is (and it is too complicated to spell out here, but see my The English Concertina, chap. 4) would seem to indicate that equal temperament did not become the standard on the English concertina until around 1860. Indeed, in his Short Account of the English Concertina of 1865 (the first "history" of the instrument), William Caldwell notes that English concertinas can be had in both tunings, while as late as 1885, the important acoustician Alexander John Ellis (known today mainly for his translation into English of the terminal study on acoustics by Helmholz and himself a concertinist) could write that the instrument was "still usually tuned in the older meantone temperament" (in his translation of Helmholz, On the Sensation of Tone. Finally, John Charles Ward, spurred to defend the concertina against its critics, could, as late as 1891, write that "amongst inferior makers the unequal temperament and other defects still flourish, to the detriment of the instrument's good name." Indeed, it's fascinating to find the German composer Richard Strauss still referring to the meantone tuning of the English concertina in his twentieth-century translation and revision of Berlioz's famous treatise on orchestration. (Obviously, Strauss was rather out of touch with the instrument, and we may question his familiarity with it.) 3. How, then, did the meantone concertina fare when matched with a piano, whether an English piano with a like meantone tuning, or a Continental piano with equal temperament? It is difficult to say. First, we should recall that when Giulio Regondi toured the Continent on two occasions in the 1840s, critics remarked about the meantone tuning (without using the term), but never once complained that the concertina and piano were out of tune. And even when matched with a meantone-tuned English piano, the latter still only had one key for the A flat/ G sharp and one key for the E flat/D sharp. Did one of the concertina's buttons for each pair match that single key, or was the latter somewhere in between the two buttons. In any event, the ear quickly adjusts to the differences. (A tiny footnote to the above: one of the responses noted that pianos did not have "split" keys (which would have permitted them to accomodate themselves to the E flat/D sharp and A flat/G sharp dichotomies of the concertina). In general, the respondent is quite right. We might note, though, that during the sixteenth century, the theorist Italian music theorist and composer Nicola Vicentino, in an attempt, once again, to resurrect the musical practices of ancient Greece, experimented with precisely such an instrument.) 4. Were there in fact early concertinas with equal temperament. Perhaps, for as Stephen Chambers once reminded me, there are early instruments without the "choice" between E flat/D sharp and A flat/G sharp. One might begin answering the question by examining closely the early concertinas with fewer than 48 keys and see which buttons are missing. III. TACTILE DIFFERENTIATION Now, I don't mean to sound aloof or preacher-like. But we simply should stop worrying about such things as making the various buttons different colors or distinguishing between them through tactile or any other means. In the end, one learns to play the English concertina -- or, for that matter, any other concertina or any other instrument -- in one way and one way only: BY PRACTICING!!! IV. THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF FREE-REED INSTRUMENTS James would like to know why, as Director of the CSFRI, I have not made its collection of Victorian music (and tutors) for the English concertina available for the asking on the internet. Simply put, it has to do with lack of both funds and manpower. Briefly, the CSFRI received no funding from the CUNY Graduate Center (nor should it--let's face it, grateful though I am for the Graduate Center's sponsorship, I realize full well that CSFRI is not -- and cannot be -- a high-priority item). Rather it lives on the "small" profits that it makes from its annual concert/symposium, with these then being used to sponsor that for the following year. At times, however, there are no profits, not even small ones, as when we lost our shirt in Spring 2003 with our "Free Reeds of Asia" event. Indeed, such a loss straps us even more tightly for the following year (but see below). Moreover, I am at a complete loss to understand just what James means when he says that CSFRI is "hiding" its collection. As our website points out, we will, upon request (and if there is no copyright infringement), be perfectly happy to make copies of what we have. A word about copyright infringement: although the music and tutors in question are obviously in public domain, some -- and only some -- of the collection was acquired from the British Library. Now, when one orders a microfilm from the British Library (or virtually any other major library), one signs an agreement not to reproduce the material in question. Thus to repeat -- and qualify -- something that I just said: we will be happy to reproduce those items in our collection for which there is no active copyright and for which there is no standing agreement not to reproduce. To be sure, this means that we cannot reproduce everything. Yet one of the things that was mentioned in the course of the postings was the Regondi tutor (in fact there are two Regondi tutors). Since neither of these was acquired from the British Library, we would be happy to make xerox copies upon request (and in fact, we have done so for a number of people in the past). In the end, I do share James's wish for a world in which, sitting here in my study, i could go click, click, click, and call up, at will, the manuscript and printed treasures of the British Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Library of Congress. In the meantime, I either order things through the more customary channels, pay the price, or do without. Such, I'm afraid, is life! With a thank you to James for his curiosity, provocative assertions, and gentlemanly manner!!!

GOOD FOLKS: Having only recently figured out how to access and -- more significantly -- respond to postings on the new forum site, I am preparing a response to some of the recent postings by James Plamondon. More specifically, I will be responding to (1) his queries about why the concertina lost popularity (about which I believe he is way off base); (2) his notions about meantone tuning and the layout of the buttons on the English concertina; and (3) his somewhat -- what shall I call them? -- unfair charges that the CSFRI is "hiding" its collection of English concertina music from the Victorian period. I hope to get to it all either tomorrow or the next day (by the weekend at the latest). Allan