142 Mr DE morgan, ON THE BEATS OF IMPERFECT CONSONANCES. 



compartments of the same organ, produce two systems which do not agree : they take care that 

 their tuning-forks shall give them the same standard-note ; but this is all they can get. Many 

 years ago I had two dulcimers, as 1 suppose they must be called, of a couple of octaves each : 

 the notes were given by single strings, and the sound was produced by a hammer held in the 

 hand; they stood exceedingly well in tune, and the sound was as pure as that of a tuning- 

 fork. When I tuned one to equal temperament, as I thought, and tlien the other, I never 

 found agreement, though each was satisfactory by itself. I soon left off, setting down the 

 discordance to my own inexperience. But an old professional tuner, to whom I mentioned the 

 subject, assured me that he did not believe either that any tuner gained equal temperament, or 

 that any one tuner agreed with himself or with any other. He summed up by saying that 

 "equal temperament was equal nonsense." 



An octave of tuning-forks might easily be prepared, adjusted with exactness to any tempe- 

 rament by beats. These beats can be heard in a consonance of tuning-forks as well as in one of 

 strings or of pipes. The preparation of a standard set, for the manufacturer's own use, would 

 cost time and trouble : but the standards once at hand, copies might be taken off by unisons 

 with comparative ease. The labour of obtaining the bearings from the tuning-forks would be 

 small compared with that of adjustment, as now practised. In tuning the organ, I feel certain 

 that the ear of the tuner must be much injured, for the moment, by the hideous squalling slides 

 which the pipe sounds while the tuning-instrument is inserted and turned about at the top. 

 He might still be a judge of a perfect unison ; but I should no more imagine him able to , 

 know the fiftieth part of a mean semitone from the twenty -fifth, when his ear is just out of this 

 abominable clamour, than I should rely on the tenth part of a second from the wire of an 

 astronomer who had the instant before been tossed in a blanket. The sensibility to false 

 intonation languishes and almost dies during a powerful crash of the whole orchestra ; but it 

 is fostered and nourished by soft passages performed on a few instruments. 



When beats are employed at the instrument itself, a watch is in several respects a difficult 

 standard. The counting should begin when the ear is well in gear with the beats, which will 

 not happen just at the five seconds or the quarter minute. And the employment of the eye 

 at the very commencement of counting is confusing to the ear. A regulated metronome might 

 be used, but I suspect it would be a troublesome instrument. A half-minute sand-glass (emery 

 powder should be used) would probably be found the best time-piece ; this could be turned 

 over when the ear is in repose on the beats ; and the counting would begin from the tuner's 

 own perception of his own act, with that composure which would arise from the act being in 

 his own power. 



The system of equal temperament is to my ear the worst I know of. I believe that the 

 tuners obtain something like it. A newly-tuned pianoforte is to me insipid and uninteresting, 

 compared with the same instrument when some way in its progress towards being out of tune. 

 Now as every bearable change must be called temperament, and not maltonation, I suppose 

 that, in passing from key to key by modulation, the variety which the temperament of wear 

 and accident produces is more pleasing than the dead flat of equal temperament. I give the 

 results of four systems, which I shall now describe. 



P is equal temperament, on which I need say no more. 



