Quartertones quotations

Cleveland, Henry R. The Origin and Progress of Music. The New-England
magazine. Volume 9, Issue 7, July 1835

The Greeks possessed even greater natural advantages that the modern
Italians. Their taste for the fine arts is without any rival; and the
clear and mild atmosphere of their country undoubtedly rendered their
voices superior to those of any modern civilized nation. They began
very early, however, to reduce music to a regular science. In 546, B.
C., Casus wrote a treatise on the theory of music; and Pythagoras
investigated the mathematical relations of tones. The division of the
sclae, as explained by Vitruvius, is somewhat intricate; it consisted
of two octaves and a half; but these octaves, however, contained only
half the compass of our own -- as the Greeks appear to have used half-
notes and quarter-tones, where we employ whole and semitones. As there
is much uncertainty still, respecting the signification of their
terms,it is not worth our while to go into the detail upon this point.
It is worthy of remark, however, that ther Greeks had so cultivated
music, that their language was employed in the science exclusively,
and seems to have been as intimately connected with it, as Italian is
at the present day. Vitruvius remarks, that, 'harmony is a difficult
musical science, but most difficult to those who are unacquainted with
the Greek language, because it is necessary to use many Greek words,
to which there are no corresponding ones in the Latin.'

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Saroni, H. S. What is Music? The American Whig review. Volume 10,
Issue 21, Sept 1849

_Villoteau,_ a traveller in the East, and a musician to whom the
history of muisic is under a great many obligations, made it his
special object to collect the various songs of the Orient. On his
arrival at Cairo he engaged for this purpose an Arabian music-master,
who, following the custom of the Arabian professors, only sung the
airs, leaving it to his pupil to remember them as best he could,
Villoteau instantly saw to work and wrote them down, but noticing now
and then some slight detonations in his master's voice, he took the
liberty to correct them in his manuscript. After having finished his
task he tried to sing the air which the Arab had just taught him, be
he had only sung a few notes when he was arrested by the Arab, who
indignantly told him that he, Villoteau, sung false. Great discussions
took place on this matter between master and pupil; each one assured
the other that his intonations were irreproachable, and that he could
not hear the others music without experienceing great pain in his
ears. At last Villoteau thought there might be some singular cause for
this disagreement, and knowing theat the fingerboard of the Eoud,
(Arabian guitar,) was divided according to the Arabian gamut, he
caused such a one to be brought, and to his great astonishment he
found intervals which in our European system do not exist at all. The
Arabs divide their octave into twenty-four intervals, while the
Europeans have only twelve for the same space, and no wonder that the
untutored ear of the Frenchman could not conceive those nice and acute
variations of sound...
It would seem, if we except the Chinese, that music, in its migration
from east to west, has gradually lost the minor intervals, and come
down to us in a more condensed shape, and though quarter-tones have
been employed durng the last century by several celebrated singers,
this has been done rather to excite astonishment, than to enrich our
present system.

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Poole, H.W. On Perfect Intonation and the Euharmonic Organ. New
Englander and Yale review. Volume 8, Issue 30, May 1850

The history of the diatonic scale will show only the paucity or
incompleteness f the instruments of the ancients, and that the moderns
have advanced far beyond them in instruments and means to express the
true scale of harmony and nature in its varied combinations: but never
that any nation or people ever set up any other scale of musical
intervals than accord with the harmony of universal nature. If a
nation is discovered with an instrument of four notes only, and if
they confine their music to simple melodies cramped within the narrow
compass of these notes; yet within that limit , they take, always
melodic and harmonic intervals. "The scales the Greeks used," says an
able writer in the Westminster Review, "were precisely like our own,
and for the reason that there is but one system of musical sounds in
nature" * If any people ever divided into a few quarter tones only,
that was whining, not music, not the first effort after a true melody
and harmony. These latter qualities of all sweet song have their aws
of intervals fixed: and the progress of science and the arts, in
relation to music and musical instruments, has set forth a progress
only by advance in the line of truth already know; not by its
overthrow; and opened on the world the wonder-working melodies and
harmonies of modern composers and artists.
*art vi, Jan. No., 1849
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Andrews, Stephen Pearl. The Scientific Universal Language: Its
Character and Relation to Other Languages. Corresponding First
Discriminations in Thought and Language. Continental monthly. Volume
6, Issue 5, November 1864

The clucks of Hottentot Tribes and the whistle heard in some of the
North American Languages have been reckoned in, upon easy terms, with
the more serviceable and euphonious members of the Phonetic family,
and mere trivial shades of sounds were put upon the same footing as
the pivotal sounds themselves. This is as if certain obdurate
compounds were introduced in the first instance among Chemical
Elements--which subsequent analysis may even prove to be the case in
respect to some substances that we now recognise as Elements--and
then, by assigning to the least important of Elements the same rank,
and giving to them the same attention as to the most important, the
number were augmented beyond the practical or working body of
Elements, and our treatises upon Chemistry encumbered by a mass of
useless matter. Or again, it is as if among the Elements of Music were
included all conceivable sounds, as the squeal, the shriek, the sob,
etc.; and as if, in addition to this, the least intervals, the quarter
tones for instance, were ranked as the musical equals of the whole
tones...

Other Vowel-Sounds, shades more or less distinct of some one of these
Leading Sounds, [_I,_i (_ee_ in f_ee_l); E, e (_a_ in m_a_te); A, a
(_a_ in F_a_-ther); _o,_ o (_aw_ in _aw_ful); _u,_ u (_u_in c_u_rd);
O, o (_o_ in n_o_-ble); U, u (_oo_ in f_oo_l).] are intersperced by
nature between these _diatonic_ sounds, like the half tones nad
quarter tones in Music... These four [French _eu, e muet, U;_ and
Italian O] are the Leading Semi-tone Sounds; which along with _a_carry
the Scale from Seven (7) diatonic up to twelve (12) chromatic....
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The Old Cabinet. Scribners monthly.Volume 14, Issue 4, August 1877

Professor Lyle [of the Imperial University of Yeddo] says:

"If my ear does not deceive me , the scale they [Japanese] use, as
compared with ours, differs in the position of the semitones, or,
rather, in not having true _semi_tones, but three-quarter tones
instead..."

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Hapgood, Isabel F. A Russian Summer Resort. The Atlantic monthly.
Volume 72, Issue 431, September 1893

One of their [the Finnish market women at Tzarskoe] specialties was
the sale of lilies of the valley, which grow wild in the Russian
forests. Their peculiar little trot-trot, and the indescribable semi-
tones and quarter-tones in which they cried, _"La'nd-dy-y-y-she'e!"_
were unmistakably Finnish at any distance.

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Fillmore, John Comfort. A Study of Indian Music. The Century. Volume
47, Issue 4, Feb 1894

It must be freely admitted at the outset that there is a striking
differene between the rendering of the Indian songs here given and
that heard in the native singing of them. This difference does not
consist merely, or mainly in the additition of chords. The Indians
sing with a quality of voice different from ours--one more nearly akin
to our speaking voice. It is high and shrill, and white men who hear
it for the first time, especially if they do not understand the words
or appreciate the sentiment embodied in the song, are apt to find it
unpleasant. And the difference between their singing and ours lies not
alone in the peculiar quality of the vocal tone, but also in the fact
that the voice slides from one scale-tone to another, instead of
moving by sharply defined intervals, as in our singing. Their melodic
ornaments, too, often consist of quarter-tones, or perhaps even
smaller intervals, so that they can be only approximately rendered in
our notation.....
I soon found that he piano, with the audible thud of its hammer, its
inability to produce intervals smaller than a semitone, its fixity of
pitch, and its tempered tuning was as unsatisfactrory to the Indian as
his singing can be to our unaccustomed ears...Long before the first
week was over, all my preconceived notions of the significance of the
incomplete scales, and of the importance of the plain major and minor
chords as related to acoustic problems, had wholly disappeared. The
Indian criticism had nothing to do with such things, First of all it
related to the accurate melodic and rythmic rendering of the songs,
the observing of ties, syncopations, exact length of tones, etc. On
such points the Indians are very strenuous, as becomes those who
receive and hand down traditions unimpaired for centuries

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Raimond, C. E. The Threkeld Ear. The Living age. Volume 216, Issue
2800, Mar 5, 1898

"...The great problem in the casting of bells is the finding an ear
true enough to detect the slight flatness or sharpness of the note.
Not one ear in a thousand can be trusted. Yet the true pitch must be
mathematically demonstrable. You know, of course, that every musical
note has its correspinding geometrical figure?"
"...These lines [Chladni's figures] indicated the 'nodes' or places
where the vibratory movement did not exist. The designs are not more
intricate and beautiful that they are mathematically exact. They gave
the world the first ocular proof that each determinate note belongs to
a determinate figure, and the the higher the note the more
complicated is the design which is its equivalent expression. A
Threlkeld perceives the harmony in these high whistling notes. To him
'the quarter tone' is not of necessity discordant. But where the sound
pattern is smudged and rudely broken up-wrenched violently out or
grace and order as in your Moorish dance--a Threlkeld's nerves are
torn and tortured, they suffer with the writhing murdered sound, his
brain reels, night and chaos seem fallen on the earth." He drew his
hand across his eyes. "But these things are far from most men's
comprehension--happily, happily."
"You think I, for instance, could never be taught to perceive these
subtleties?"
The old man smiled indulgently, as though condescending to the
capacity of a child.
"Certain things you could perceive if they were pointed out..."