Society of Arts paper on tuning updated

Irish Flute
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Some time back, I located and published on my web site an account of a meeting held by the Society of Arts in Britain in 1859 to determine what could and should be done about standardising musical pitch. The account of the meeting published in the Society’s Journal starting with a long list of attendees, and we were able to guess at the identities of a few of them. Since that time, the indefatiguable Dr Brian Blood, CEO of Dolmetsch Musical Instruments has been gnawing away, tracking them down relentlessly one by one. With his efforts we now have definite bios for most of them and very plausible entries for all.

Even if you’ve already read the articles, do come back and read the first page again to soak up the ambience of those attending the meeting. Brian has not only amassed bios, but snippets and anecdotes that enable us to enjoy as well as appreciate the characters. Eg from Mr Hobbs:

“… all the workmen in the (American) establishment would, if possible, lend a helping hand. If they saw an error, they would mention it, and in every possible way they would aid in carrying out the idea. But in England, it was quite the reverse. If the workman could do anything to make a machine go wrong they would do it…”

So dip in again:

http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/Society%20of%20Arts%20Pitch.htm

(and the two pages following)

And of course, if you have more to add, or feel you should challenge an entry, do let us know! My thanks again to Dr Brian Blood.

Terry

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Thank you, Terry.

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Dr Brian Blood has made some further additions to the attendees information - thanks Brian!

And I’ve added another page to the series. It suddenly occured to me that there seems to have been a stuff-up, indeed a string of stuff-ups. The Society chose Stuttgart Pitch, given as A440, but used Just Intonation to convert it to their preferred format C528. Then the rest of the world used Equal Temperament to convert it back, arriving at “Society of Arts Pitch” A444. Then their chap making the fork seemed to run on the A444 figure but got it too sharp! Then Ellis seems to have done another ET conversion to confuse matters further!

So we should probably regard Society of Arts Pitch as really A440, in that that was what the Society intended. But read on and draw your own conclusions. The 4 page series starts at:

http://www.mcgee-flutes.com/Society%20of%20Arts%20Pitch.htm

Terry