Re: [tuning] Manuel's keyboard photos

Joe wrote:
>I've found that Josef Petzval was lecturing on and demonstrating
>31-EDO at the University of Vienna in the late 1800s. So
>apparently there was some interest in 31-EDO in Vienna during
>the 19th Century.

Ah, so 100 years later there was a renewed interest. Do you
know if any music was written specifically for this instrument,
other than Mozart's two lost pieces?

Manuel

> From: <manuel.op.de.coul@eon-benelux.com>
> To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2001 4:50 AM
> Subject: Re: [tuning] Manuel's keyboard photos
>
>
> Ah, so 100 years later there was a renewed interest. Do you
> know if any music was written specifically for this instrument,
> other than Mozart's two lost pieces?

No, actually the only information I have about this specific
instrument is that which you posted long ago to the list
a while back (I think when it was hosted at Mills).

The first information I got about Petzval's musical activities
was from Willi M�llendorf's book, which I translated as part
of my Microfest 2001 presentation last April.

List-member Klaus Schmirler has generously improved on most of
my translation, and when finished, the book will be available
online at my website (with musicial illustrations linking to
mp3's of the examples -- this is already available... follow the
links at the bottom of the page, to previous chapters).

I quote from a footnote on a page of my translation in the
last part of M�llendorf's book:
http://www.ixpres.com/interval/monzo/moellendorf/conclusion.htm

>> Perhaps I would have had to call the now long-deceased
>> professor Josef Petzval here as first, already in the 1860s
>> with his lectures at Vienna University he availed himself of
>> an instrument with more than 12 steps. But it seems to me as
>> if the efforts of this original heading nevertheless were more
>> towards improving our old system regarding its purity, than to
>> enrich it with new tone steps. Because on his piano (by the
>> way also on his "Guitharp", a completely new instrument) one
>> could make music either with 12 or with 31 steps, so that one
>> could hardly speak of quarter-tone music here.

So Petzval obviously created a new 31-EDO instrument, but
M�llendorf neglects to say whether Petzval's xenharmonic piano
was one he invented or had made himself, or whether it was
the already-existing instrument which Manuel documents.

An interesting aspect of Petzval's work is that he is today
known primarily as an optician -- he designed an anastigmatic
lens which eventually led to the invention of the movie camera.

This is a strong parallel here with Huygens, 2 centuries before,
and I think it's very likely that Petzval's introduction to
31-EDO music-theory was a fortuitous accident, thru his
discovery of Huygens's writings on the subject while Petzval
was studying Huygens's optical research. (All of this is
pure speculation on my part... but the pieces seem to fit
the puzzle... hmmm... there's a subject for future research;
mayble I'll be going to Vienna next summer...)

A mathematical exploration, "The Petzval's Tone System", by
list-member J�n Haluska, can be found in the book he edited,
_Ambiguitiy and Music_, Seminar Mathematics and Music, Bratislava,
2000, ISBN: 80-968374-0-0.

love / peace / harmony ...

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

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