Old-ish article: Perrett, Proceedings of the Musical Association

This was a lecture before the RMA with musical examples on a special
reed-organ... the full text is available, but these excerpts are
pretty amazing by themselves. Why has this guy Perrett not been
recognized?

26 APRIL, 1932

THE HERITAGE OF GREECE IN MUSIC.
BY WILFRID PERRETT, PH.D.,
Reader in German in the University of London.

"As to Hipkins: after some forty years the assertion that
piano-makers cause the hammer to strike the string at a
point which eliminates the 7th harmonic, repeated as scientific
fact by innumerable writers, is degraded to a false hypothesis
in Vol. VIII of Geiger & Scheel, Handbuch der Physik, 1927,
p. 187. Professor Kalahne should have given the reference
to two papers in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1885,
in which Hipkins, who was Broadwood's expert, showed that
the observations of Helmholtz on this point were erroneous
in every respect. About twenty years ago I used to listen to
a bass string in every good piano I could come across. The
7th harmonic is one of the most prominent. It can invariably
be detected by the beats which it makes with the minor
seventh three octaves above.

"Pole's table
on p. 222 showing the same degree of roughness for 5 : 6,
5 : 9, and the tritone, the diabolic interval, 32: 45, proves
that he too did not know what he was talking about. Pole
can never have had an opportunity to submit this estimate
to the test of exact experiment. If there is not too much
noise, it is possible to attempt an analysis of the repulsive
combination Mi contra Fa, best taken for the purpose in the
twice-accented octave. The reeds f, b" sounding together
produce two Tartini tones, making an interval somewhere
between the fourth and the fifth. The ear is not able to
define them much more closely than that. They are irrational.
But a simple calculation shows that the full discord is as
13 : 19: 32 : 45, and a reference to Ellis's Table and a little
patience give 657c. as the equivalent of 13 : 19. So now we
know that F sustained or remembered against B produces
two more notes, heard or under-heard, which together make
an impossible Fifth, 45c. or a quarter of a minor tone flat.

"... to some
persons two sustained notes may mean either three notes or
four notes. Tartini was one of these, Joachim was another,
the late Sir Thomas Wrightson was another. It is on record
that all three employed septimal intervals in their doublestopping.

"I never realised how few persons are able to
detect these undertones (Tartini tones) until I tried to
demonstrate the enharmonic system of Olympos before the
Philological Society in 1928 by means of an octave of twenty
tuning-forks, when I found to my dismay that in most cases
the demonstration was a complete failure. Hence the
necessity for the present instrument, to bring out the latent
harmony.

"For example, these two tuning-forks give Tartini's
substitute for the tritone 32 : 45 in the ascending scale from
C. Their ratio is 5: 7, which is the inversion of 10:7,
found, as I infer, by Olympos as a substitute for the tritone
down from B to F (45 : 32) in the Greek descending scale
from E.

"On the harmonium the
accord 2 : 3 : 5 : 7 with middle C as 5 should be heard as a
perfectly smooth concord. This is the true form of the
accord known as the German Sixth. According to Helmholtz
(p. 228) `the scales of modern music cannot possibly accept
tones determined by the number 7,' a truly colossal blunder.

"With each substantive key-note we must
have the 17th harmonic found by Ellis to give the true form
of the accords of the minor seventh and ninth, (8): 10: 12:
14: 17.

"If it is true that 'we have
no experience of septimal harmony,' that is not the fault of
A. J. Ellis, but the confession implies that we cannot appreciate
fine chamber-music when we hear it.

"This interval of approximately 7c, making all the difference
between happiness and misery, recurs so frequently that I
decided to see what would happen, on paper, if the octave
were divided into 171 equal parts. I have worked it out, and
find that this new cycle contains all the intervals of quintal,
tertian, septimal, and septendecimal harmony to within lc.
The claim may therefore be made that the cycle of 171
represents the perfect musical scale."

"... when two notes are sounded together,
as Lord Rayleigh shows, there is no limit to the fineness of
discrimination by the method of beats. I believe that is the
only instance in which any human sense is capable of an
unlimited fineness of discrimination; but it does not mean
that you must have a very keen musical ear in order to do
it. It is simply that you get alternations of sound and silence.
Anybody can note them."

~~~T~~~

Was it not I who mentioned 171-EDO on this list as a universal tuning?

See, messsage #63689.

Important is the fact that Mr. Perrett is delving into septendecimal
intervals one of which, 17:14, may be said to exist in the maqam genre.

Oz.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Dent" <stringph@gmail.com>
To: <tuning@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: 24 �ubat 2008 Pazar 0:54
Subject: [tuning] Old-ish article: Perrett, Proceedings of the Musical
Association

>
> This was a lecture before the RMA with musical examples on a special
> reed-organ... the full text is available, but these excerpts are
> pretty amazing by themselves. Why has this guy Perrett not been
> recognized?
>
> 26 APRIL, 1932
>
> THE HERITAGE OF GREECE IN MUSIC.
> BY WILFRID PERRETT, PH.D.,
> Reader in German in the University of London.
>
> "As to Hipkins: after some forty years the assertion that
> piano-makers cause the hammer to strike the string at a
> point which eliminates the 7th harmonic, repeated as scientific
> fact by innumerable writers, is degraded to a false hypothesis
> in Vol. VIII of Geiger & Scheel, Handbuch der Physik, 1927,
> p. 187. Professor Kalahne should have given the reference
> to two papers in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1885,
> in which Hipkins, who was Broadwood's expert, showed that
> the observations of Helmholtz on this point were erroneous
> in every respect. About twenty years ago I used to listen to
> a bass string in every good piano I could come across. The
> 7th harmonic is one of the most prominent. It can invariably
> be detected by the beats which it makes with the minor
> seventh three octaves above.
>
> "Pole's table
> on p. 222 showing the same degree of roughness for 5 : 6,
> 5 : 9, and the tritone, the diabolic interval, 32: 45, proves
> that he too did not know what he was talking about. Pole
> can never have had an opportunity to submit this estimate
> to the test of exact experiment. If there is not too much
> noise, it is possible to attempt an analysis of the repulsive
> combination Mi contra Fa, best taken for the purpose in the
> twice-accented octave. The reeds f, b" sounding together
> produce two Tartini tones, making an interval somewhere
> between the fourth and the fifth. The ear is not able to
> define them much more closely than that. They are irrational.
> But a simple calculation shows that the full discord is as
> 13 : 19: 32 : 45, and a reference to Ellis's Table and a little
> patience give 657c. as the equivalent of 13 : 19. So now we
> know that F sustained or remembered against B produces
> two more notes, heard or under-heard, which together make
> an impossible Fifth, 45c. or a quarter of a minor tone flat.
>
> "... to some
> persons two sustained notes may mean either three notes or
> four notes. Tartini was one of these, Joachim was another,
> the late Sir Thomas Wrightson was another. It is on record
> that all three employed septimal intervals in their doublestopping.
>
> "I never realised how few persons are able to
> detect these undertones (Tartini tones) until I tried to
> demonstrate the enharmonic system of Olympos before the
> Philological Society in 1928 by means of an octave of twenty
> tuning-forks, when I found to my dismay that in most cases
> the demonstration was a complete failure. Hence the
> necessity for the present instrument, to bring out the latent
> harmony.
>
> "For example, these two tuning-forks give Tartini's
> substitute for the tritone 32 : 45 in the ascending scale from
> C. Their ratio is 5: 7, which is the inversion of 10:7,
> found, as I infer, by Olympos as a substitute for the tritone
> down from B to F (45 : 32) in the Greek descending scale
> from E.
>
> "On the harmonium the
> accord 2 : 3 : 5 : 7 with middle C as 5 should be heard as a
> perfectly smooth concord. This is the true form of the
> accord known as the German Sixth. According to Helmholtz
> (p. 228) `the scales of modern music cannot possibly accept
> tones determined by the number 7,' a truly colossal blunder.
>
> "With each substantive key-note we must
> have the 17th harmonic found by Ellis to give the true form
> of the accords of the minor seventh and ninth, (8): 10: 12:
> 14: 17.
>
> "If it is true that 'we have
> no experience of septimal harmony,' that is not the fault of
> A. J. Ellis, but the confession implies that we cannot appreciate
> fine chamber-music when we hear it.
>
> "This interval of approximately 7c, making all the difference
> between happiness and misery, recurs so frequently that I
> decided to see what would happen, on paper, if the octave
> were divided into 171 equal parts. I have worked it out, and
> find that this new cycle contains all the intervals of quintal,
> tertian, septimal, and septendecimal harmony to within lc.
> The claim may therefore be made that the cycle of 171
> represents the perfect musical scale."
>
> "... when two notes are sounded together,
> as Lord Rayleigh shows, there is no limit to the fineness of
> discrimination by the method of beats. I believe that is the
> only instance in which any human sense is capable of an
> unlimited fineness of discrimination; but it does not mean
> that you must have a very keen musical ear in order to do
> it. It is simply that you get alternations of sound and silence.
> Anybody can note them."
>
> ~~~T~~~
>

Hi Tom,

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Dent" <stringph@...> wrote:
>
>
> This was a lecture before the RMA with musical examples
> on a special reed-organ... the full text is available,
> but these excerpts are pretty amazing by themselves.
> Why has this guy Perrett not been recognized?

Perrett, and the microtonal reed-organ he built, were
mentioned by Partch in his book _Genesis of a Music_.

-monz
http://tonalsoft.com/tonescape.aspx
Tonescape microtonal music software