OiV TEMPERAMENT, 171 



necessary by putting in forty-four sounds to the octave. I 

 shall ask you to listen to it presently, but I am anxious to 

 conclude first my own task as to the application of true 

 temperament to 'other than keyboard-instruments. 



I have spoken hitherto entirely about organs, and har- 

 moniums. With organs not much has been done; whilst 

 harmoniums have occupied most inventors, because they are 

 instruments which show dissonance more than any others 

 owing to the peculiar quality of tone they give out. They are 

 liable to painful interference and harshness of tone. For 

 these reasons they are not liked by many persons. They are, 

 however, very convenient instruments, not at all expensive, 

 nor liable to get out of tune ; therefore they are seen in many 

 places where you do not find a piano. 



If we can get this true intonation by a moderate amount 

 of mechanism, and at a moderate price, we shall have a 

 harmonium which will play as sweetly as an organ or a 

 piano. For the piano true intonation does not appear to be so 

 necessary, because it has only an evanescent sound, the note 

 being produced by a blow. It hardly causes continuous 

 beats ; at any rate they are not so audible ; indeed the ear 

 requires to be practised, to have learned the unpleasant art of 

 detecting the beats ; when you have once acquired it, you 

 become terribly sensitive to ordinary music ; for with the 

 equal temperament, and with the errors which I have pointed 

 out in it, we never get an instrument perfectly in tune. 



.N"ow for the application of this method to orchestral instru- 

 ments. We have made a beginning. There is in the Exhi- 

 bition a trumpet invented by a friend of mine in which the 

 valves are three, but the third valve, instead of altering the 

 pitch by a tone and a half, as it usually does, alters it by a 

 comma ; therefore Mr. Bassett calls it the " Comma trumpet." 

 Whether that particular instrument is or is not successful, I 

 need not here mention, but the idea carried further may be 

 fruitful in good results, because if you can alter any dis- 

 sonant note a comma up or down, you can produce much 

 more perfect harmony in the orchestra. I am doing the same 

 thing with the clarionet and oboe. Here is a clarionet, only an 

 ordinary one, as I am anxious not to complicate the mechan- 

 ism more than necessary ; but by means of double keys it 

 will produce a great many accurrate intervals. For instance, I 

 can take the E flat in two forms, and the F in three different 



