‘ISII.] 
This difterence varies according to the 
teroperaineiU intended to be given; but, 
as the old s;y5tern of temperament is now 
deservedly abandoned, and the equal 
temperament generally adopted, it will 
be only necessary for me to point nut a 
method of ascertaining the degree of in¬ 
ternal required for its proper fifth,.which, 
though not so unexceptionable as I could 
wish, is perhaps as correct as the nature 
of the thing will admit, considering the 
difficulty of conveying on paper the par¬ 
ticular distincti('n of sound we may liave 
in idea; and I ofter it tlie more readily, 
because, in the several little treatises pro¬ 
fessedly published to make tuning easy, 
I do not meet with any attempt to give a 
like guide. 
Suppose two strings, B and C in the 
middle octave of the piano-forte, to be 
one a full semitone from the other; with 
your hatritner lower down, or flatten, C by 
the smallest possible gradations, until it 
becomes unison with B; with a tolerably 
steady hand and a few trials, you will be 
enabled to enumerate forty gradations of 
sound, which I call commas. y^fter 
having by a little practice acquired a dis¬ 
tinct and clear idea of the quantity meant 
to be represented by the term comma, 
nothing more will be required to make 
the proper fifth, (after having tuned the 
fifth a perfect, or violin or singing fifth) 
than to flatten the said perfect fifth by 
lowering the string supposed to be tuning, 
one of the afore defined commas. 
Every thing depends on the correct¬ 
ness of this fifth ; as, although the unisons 
and octaves be individually correct, there 
will be no harmony in the vvhole, should 
the temperament be not properly laid. 
Those who, after giving this method an 
attentive trial, are still unable to satisfy 
themselves in the temperament, may 
liave recourse to a set of twelve forks, 
correctly tuned, to twelve semitones in 
the octave, to which the keys in the mid¬ 
dle octave are to be tuned unisons; and 
the notes to the right and left be, as 
usual, from th.ese tuned octaves. ‘Some 
gentlemen who have marie trial of this 
mode, have written to me, tliat they have 
succeeded fjevond their most sancfuine 
expectations, and find themselves com¬ 
petent to put their instruments in better 
tune than they could before get done for 
tiiem in their neighbourhood. 
James Bhoadwood. 
Great ]/uUeney-streett 
July II^ 1811 , 
loz 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIR, 
F your correspondent Mr. Loft't*, had 
fully considered the puhlisiicd ac¬ 
counts of the clavi-cylinder, invented by 
the celebrated professoi-Chiadni, of Wit- 
temberg, he would not have imagined 
that Mr. Clagget^s Jlieulon, or organ of 
tuning-forks, could have furnished Dr. 
Chiadni with the idea of the clavi-cylin- 
der; for, in this instrument, the revolving 
part, or rubber, is a glass cylinder, but 
in Mr. Clagget’s it was a thread, a tape, 
or something like a violin-bow, rubbintr 
across tuning forks, and producing their 
t7-ans’versal \ ; but there is reason 
to fielieve that the sonorous bodies in the 
clavi-cyiinder vibrate longitudinally, and 
therefore the resemblance between the 
two instruments is next to nothino-. cer- 
tamly much less than that between the 
aieuton and the Lyrackord, Merlin’s Fo- 
cal Ha?^, ]Mr. Walker’s Celestina, or 
Maslowsky’s Koelkonf 
It would be of far greater importance 
to musical people to ascertain the causes 
of the superiority of foreign violin-strings 
and piano-forte wire, than to determine 
who was the inventor of an-instrument. If 
any of the Editor’s correspondents would 
give some information on this snlject, it 
would interest a great number of readers. 
English strings are, comparatively, re¬ 
markably low-priced, and reoiarkahly 
bad; nothing vvill do l>ut “Roman strings,” 
and they are immoderately expensive. 
I have been told that Earl Stanhope is 
engaged, or lias been, in experiments 
with English wire, with a view to render 
it serviceable in musical instruments. I 
cannot see a reason why it should not be 
manufactured to be equal to what is im¬ 
ported “ from Germany,” or efsewhere. 
Is not the piano-forte an alteiation, an 
improvement from the German instru¬ 
ment, the Clavichord? I remember 
having seen two piano-fortes of very dif¬ 
ferent dimensions, with the name Zumpe 
on them, but all the particulars that 1 can 
at present recollect concerning them are, 
that the tone of the.one was tubby, and of 
the Ollier thin, liarsh, and jino-lina. 
A. M. 
* Monthly Mag. NovemDer, 1810. 
t The Vocal Harp was exhibited in 178?'. 
Hawkins’s Clamole is a similar kind of instru¬ 
ment. The application of a bow to the strings 
of keyed instruments was thoug;htof seventy 
years ago. 
Method of tuning Keyed Stringed Instruments. ' 
r To 
