JUST INTONA TION. 53 



comma still lower than the second. We have not time I fear to play 

 that harmonium ; but I think we can use it as a means of demonstrating 

 the fact that real just intonation is not inaudible. I think any- 

 body who tried that key-board would be able to tell without looking 

 at the keys whether I am using the common chord on the one 

 key-board, or putting in the more accurate note on the other. The 

 second is much more true than the first. I will take another chord. 

 I leave the exposition of the mathematical principle to Mr. Bosanquet. 

 But, as a practical conclusion, it seems to me that we have here to 

 strike the balance between mathematical and mechanical difficulty. 

 Absolute truth should be aimed at. Don't give it up as Dr. Stainer 

 says, because surely it is within hope that some mechanism may 

 simplify the contrivance so as to make it at any rate possible. It 

 seems to me, however, speaking as a medical man, that there is 

 a physiological condition involved, which has not been sufficiently 

 adverted to in these rather acrimonious debates about true and untrue 

 intonation. It appears that the ear gets deadened spoilt, if you 

 like, as Perronet Thomson calls it. I confess that my ear is spoilt, to 

 some extent, by the habitual use of equal temperament. It has ceased 

 to give me pain at least, in keyed instruments. And, singularly 

 enough, the real mathematical sixth seems to me what organists call 

 keen. Whether we have a right to call this a vitiation, which seems to 

 be a natural compensation for what we cannot help, I will not say. I 

 have only one other thing to speak about, and hope to imitate Professor 

 Tyndall's eloquent brevity. The question of intonation has hitherto 

 been entirely dealt with by persons playing on keyed instruments. It 

 is the more difficult problem, no doubt. There are many other instru- 

 ments which require intonation as much, or even more, but that question 

 has not been so much studied. Players generally trust in orchestral 

 instruments to the lip. The lip will do a great deal, but it is obviously 

 unfair to throw on nature's mechanism, beautiful as it is, what can be 

 made more simple by man's contrivance. As Helmholtz says in 

 another passage, in the whole question of equal temperament, too 

 much has been sacrificed to the instrument, and too little attention 

 paid to God's handiwork, which is the voice. That, I am sorry to 

 say, is a very pregnant truth. Merely taking your ordinary orchestral 

 instrument, there is still much to be done. This clarionet, which 



