On Perfect Musical Intonation. 69 
correct performance. In 1811, two patents were taken out in 
England for “improvements in instruments with fixed scales,” 
an account of which, with drawings, will be found in Lond. 
hil. Mag., vols. 37, 38 and 39. These were improvements in 
temperament only, without aiming at perfect intonation. Mr. 
Hawkes’s system had seventeen sounds in the octave; Mr. Loesch- 
man’s had twenty-four sounds. There were mechanical as well 
as theoretical difficulties necessarily connected with these instru- 
ments, which were fatal to their ever coming into practical use. 
Rev. Henry Liston, the learned author of the article “ Music” in 
the Edinburgh Encyclopeedia, has done more in this department 
than any other writer. His ‘Essay on Perfect Intonation,” in 
one volume quarto, was published in London in 1812. He also 
invented an organ designed to give the diatonic scales in perfect 
tune, which was built by the eminent organ-builders, Flight and 
Robson, of London. This was an instrument of great ingenuity, 
but as the inventor was a theorist rather than a mechanician, there 
were mechanical difficulties which alone would have been fatal 
to it as a practical instrument. ‘To enable one pipe to give dif- 
ferent sounds, Mr. Liston employed “ shaders,” which, arranged 
in classes and worked by pedals, were brought over the tops of 
the open, and mouths of the stopped, pipes, to alter their pitch. 
It is hardly necessary to remark that such mechanism was im- 
practicable ; as its correct performance required an accuracy of 
motion which was incompatible with the material and the nature 
of the instrument. There were also other mechanical difficulties 
in his instrument, as well as errors and omissions in his theory, 
(of which we shall hereafter speak,) that interfere with its claim 
of being an instrument of perfect intonation. Its harmony, how- 
ever, was superior to that of the tempered organs, and is thus 
spoken of by John Farey, Sen., in the London Phil. Mag., vol. 
37, p. 273. 
“Sir: In your 27th vol., 206 p., I endeavored to call the at- 
tention of Lord Stanhope and other patrons of musical improve- 
Ments, to the perfecting of an organ capable of performing in 
perfect tune. * * * It gives me great pleasure, therefore, to be 
- able to state that the above is no longer a matter of doubtful 
Speculation ; but that myself and several others have heard an 
organ thus perfected by the Rev. Henry Liston; the exquisite 
effects of which, particularly in accompanying vocal music, far 
exceeded all that Maxwell and myself had written or perhaps 
edges the imperfections of his efforts, and concludes his essay 
as follows : 
