historical split-keyed instruments

> From: "Paul Erlich" <paul@stretch-music.com>
> Subject: Re: John Bull's "Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La"
>
>--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Aaron K. Johnson" <akjmicro@c...>
>wrote:
>
>> Do you mean that keyboard instruments had more than 12 keys/octave
>> in England's Elizabethan period? I know this to be an italian-only
>> phenomenon.
>
> it certainly became a german and french phenomenon too by the 17th
> century, though typically with only around 14 notes per octave . . .
> but i honestly don't know enough about elizabethan england to comment
> on the possibility of such instuments being used by isolated
> composers . . .

Dropping in for a second here to say: a while ago I scanned some images of
split-key keyboards from Mersenne's treatise Harmonie Universelle, 1636,
and dropped them in the files section. Perhaps not hugely germane to your
discussion but I thought I'd mention it Aaron in case you haven't seen
them. They're in a folder called "terrain" in the files section of the
yahoo site. There are ones with 16, 18, 24, 26 and 31 keys per octave.

best -Jon Wild (I haven't been reading the list very much so I might miss
a reply, don't take it personally)