S. A. Hageman—A Just Intonation Piano. 225 



During the past century a number of efforts have been made 

 to construct keyboard instruments such as the organ so as to 

 meet the requirements of just intonation. 



The problem has been considered an extremely difficult one 

 especially as regards the piano, and the unsatisfactory mechan- 

 ism heretofore devised has, in every instance, been practically 

 rejected by the musical public, though every true musician 

 would willingly sacrifice much to regain the inestimable beauty 

 and purity of just intervals. 



Helmholtz, Blaserna, and Taylor and a long line of able and 

 eminent writers, have appropriately set forth the defects of 

 tempered intonation, its tendency to obscure theory, and its 

 blighting effects upon the essential beauties of music. But no 

 instrument has been brought forward that seemed so attractive 

 as the piano, with the licentious freedom of its tempered scales 

 — and not a few have even grown into a cultivated disregard 

 of its really great defects. But the tempered piano does not 

 quite take rank among the best musicians. It is denied a place 

 in the orchestra, and the most eminent vocalists and violinists 

 accept it reluctantly for purposes of accompaniment. One 

 writer even contemplates its h'nal abandonment, along with 

 tempered intonation, apparently never dreaming that its faults 

 were capable of being remedied. Had it not been that it was 

 already installed in almost every household, it is quite probable 

 that even the complicated and cumbersome just intonation 

 organs, that have been offered, would have won the day, and 

 tempered intonation, the reproach of music, would have been, 

 at this moment, only an unpleasant memory. 



It would be foreign to the scope and purpose of this paper 

 to enter into any extended discussion of the merits or demerits 

 of tempered intonation, but it is freely granted that — though 

 through long and dreary years, while voice and violin and 

 orchestra were alone struggling for truth — music has on the 

 one hand certainly suffered from its use, it has at the same 

 time, though in an imperfect manner, filled a gap of some two 

 centuries of almost hopeless waiting for better things. 



And yet it has been by the piano and organ that the priceless 

 gems of musical masters from Bach to Wagner have been 

 brought, though in unworthy attire, into our daily lives and 

 made our common property. Their rehabiliment in fitting 

 garb has been the cherished desire of the writer and the results 

 attained are indicated in this paper. 



It has been fully realized from the very first, that such a 

 work as the construction of a just intonation piano must deal 

 very gently with existing methods and mechanism. It must 

 change nothing, take nothing away, impose little or no addi- 

 tional exertion upon the player, be free from mechanical 



