Würschmidt, the man behind the temperament

I happened upon this from Paul Erlich in the archives, about José Würschmidt:

"Do you read German? If so, you should seek out his research. He found
some very interesting stuff, essentially looking into periodicity
blocks before Fokker."

Well, that's still all I know about him and I feel I should know more.
Does anybody have pointers?

Graham

--- In tuning-math@yahoogroups.com, Graham Breed <gbreed@...> wrote:
>
> I happened upon this from Paul Erlich in the archives, about José
> Würschmidt:
>
> "Do you read German? If so, you should seek out his research. He
> found some very interesting stuff, essentially looking into
> periodicity blocks before Fokker."
>
> Well, that's still all I know about him and I feel I should know
> more.
> Does anybody have pointers?
>

Google pointed me to

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Argentina/Efem%C3%A9rides_del_5_de_febrero

Translated (also by Gogle):

"1886 - Born in Bayreuth, Germany, physicist Joseph Würschmidt, who would go to Argentina in 1925 to head the Institute of Physics, National University of Tucumán, in whose publications describe the so-called acoustic Würschmidt coma."

Apparently there is much more information in the spanish-speaking world (books as well as WWW) than there is in the german-speaking one.
--
Hans Straub

--- In tuning-math@yahoogroups.com, "hstraub64" <straub@...> wrote:

>.... publications describe the so-called acoustic Würschmidt coma."..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/31_equal_temperament
quote:
"
... the 5-limit intervals 393216:390625, known as the Würschmidt comma after music theorist José Würschmidt, and 2109375:2097152, known as the semicomma...."

with factorization of W's-comma: 2^17 * 3 / 5^8
and the 'semi-comma': 3^3 * 5^7 / 2^21

That both intervals do appear also in:
http://www.huygens-fokker.org/docs/intervals.html

bye
Andy

Note: somewhere down the line extended Latin characters are getting garbled.

On 10 August 2010 17:30, Andy <a_sparschuh@yahoo.com> wrote:

>>.... publications describe the so-called acoustic Würschmidt coma."..
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/31_equal_temperament
> quote:
> "
> ... the 5-limit intervals 393216:390625, known as the Würschmidt comma after music theorist José Würschmidt, and 2109375:2097152, known as the semicomma...."

Right, and that's about all they mention. Searches also bring up the
page on 22 note equal temperament, which he's said to have championed.
Nothing else about his music theory comes up. Paul mentioned
research in German that covers periodicity blocks before Fokker.
That's quite possible because Tanaka also wrote in German.

Graham