Mersenne keyboard design / Moellendorf Re: Draft 3 FAQ: Organs with split keys fewer than 17 tones per octave

Dear Jon, Joe and list members

> Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 15:21:13 -0500 (EST)
> From: jon wild <wild@fas.harvard.edu>
> Subject: Re: Draft 3 FAQ: Organs with split keys fewer than 17 tones per octave

> Say what you want about big institutions - they have great libraries.

> I read Ibo Ortgies' great FAQ entry minutes after looking at a bunch of
> split-key diagrams from Mersenne's _Harmonie Universelle_ from 1636. Since
> Ibo said he thought there weren't split keyboards in France until quite a
> few years later than that, I thought people might be interested to see
> these diagrams. I scanned them and put them in the files area of
> yahoogroups, but the feature to create a new folder wasn't working, so I
> put them somewhere kind of random. They are here:

> /tuning/files/terrain/
...

> Ibo, you probably know these diagrams already and have some reason for
> thinking they were only theory, and that no organs actually existed in
> France like this? Mersenne seems very knowledgable about organ
> construction, and that part of the treatise is surely based on experience.

Thanks, for the pictures.
(The 18-24-26 is mirrored vertically - already originally?)

Regarding that specific topic which I'm writing about
"Organs with split keys fewer than 17 tones per octave"
the Mersenne-keyboard would fit into the range, even leading to enlarge
the possible number again.
One thing is that I'm dealing with the development of this feature in
the frame of pythagorean tuning and meantone temperament organs - in
view of instruments, which really existed, which makes it somewhat
difficult to include JI-keyboards, especially if we don't know, whether
there were organs which had this kind of design (not only talking of the
situation in France).

But do we know of any organ which had a keyboard like that?

The Mersenne-keyboards are JI-keyboards: the numbers on them indicate
the ratios and two keys provide the numbers by which you can figure out
the respective ratio.

Might be different in stringed keyboard-instruments, which were easier
and much less costly to build and to (re-)tune for experiments.

I'd be happy to recieve reports about France

> By the way, did you know the Swedish composer Bengt Hambreus? - he had a
> great love and knowledge of historical organ design, and he oversaw the
> construction of a beautiful replica baroque organ in Montreal. I studied
> composition with him there for a couple of years, and he taught me lots
> about the organ.

I'm not very much into this branch of contemporary music and I didn't
know him personally, only heard a couple of pieces by him: I heard his
composition for the inauguration of the Arp-Schnitger-organ in Hamburg,
St.Jakobi, at that event Easter 1993, and a later composition for organ
"riflessioni". - but I know that he took great interest in our
activities here. He was here at the Organ academy in 1998 (which I had
to miss) and presented a lecture.

---------

> Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 21:18:36 -0000
> From: "Joe Monzo, "monz"" <MONZ@JUNO.COM>
> Subject: Re: Draft 3 FAQ: Organs with split keys fewer than 17 tones per octave

Interesting info, I didn't know about this - such a "modern" era for me :-)
thanks!

...
> In July 1915, Willi Mo:llendorff

[was the spelling "M�llendorf"? as I find it in 3 different websites including
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/schoenberg/Vienna1905.htm]

> secured a patent for a unique
> quarter-tone keyboard which used the "split-key" idea.

> He had a harmonium constructed with a keyboard which bore a
> great resemblance to the usual Halberstadt 7-white 5-black
> design, but with a row of brown keys which were placed in
> between each of the regular ones.

> These brown keys were also "split", in that they protruded
> from the surface of the white keys at the front and the back,
> but not in the middle.

I need to see a graphic or photo to understand how that works...

regards
Ibo Ortgies

--- In tuning@y..., Ibo Ortgies <ibo.ortgies@m...> wrote:

/tuning/topicId_20152.html#20152

> > Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 21:18:36 -0000
> > From: "Joe Monzo, "monz"" <MONZ@J...>
> > Subject: Re: Draft 3 FAQ: Organs with split keys fewer
> > than 17 tones per octave
>
> Interesting info, I didn't know about this - such a "modern"
> era for me :-)
> thanks!
>
> ...
> > In July 1915, Willi Mo:llendorff
>
> [was the spelling "Möllendorf"? as I find it in 3 different
> websites including
> http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/schoenberg/Vienna1905.htm]

Yes, that's an umlaut on the "u". On plain emails I use a colon
after the vowel to represent the umlaut. Because the internet
is so heavily biased linguistically in favor of English, the
umlauted vowels often don't appear properly.

There are two "f"s at the end of his name. I probably misspelled
it myself in a few places. Someday they'll all be fixed. :)

>
> > secured a patent for a unique
> > quarter-tone keyboard which used the "split-key" idea.
>
> > He had a harmonium constructed with a keyboard which bore a
> > great resemblance to the usual Halberstadt 7-white 5-black
> > design, but with a row of brown keys which were placed in
> > between each of the regular ones.
>
> > These brown keys were also "split", in that they protruded
> > from the surface of the white keys at the front and the back,
> > but not in the middle.
>
>
> I need to see a graphic or photo to understand how that works...

First, Ibo, I want to congratulate you on your fantastic ASCII
representations of keyboards!
/tuning/topicId_20120.html#20151

Doing a version of Mo:llendorff's like that would probably be
quite difficult, because the cut-out sections of the brown keys
have odd shapes. I'll give it a try when I have time.

I believe that a reproduction of Mo:llendorff's drawing (submitted
for his patent and printed in his book) appeared in the article
by Doug Keislar in the microtonal issue of _Computer Music Journal_
from 1987. Sorry, don't have a detailed reference handy.

-monz
http://www.monz.org
"All roads lead to n^0"