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JOUrNAl of MUSIC TheOrY
conservative keyboard tuning practices.
15
The concertina’s unequal intona-
tion schemes were also markers of its intellectual heritage. This was clearly rec-
ognized by hector Berlioz, who encountered Wheatstone’s invention when
he served as a judge of musical instruments at the Great exhibition of 1851.
Berlioz’s experience there inspired him to include a lengthy tirade on the
concertina in the second edition of his orchestration treatise. remarking on
the fact that the instrument’s flats were higher than its sharps, in contradic-
tion to inflectional intuition, Berlioz ([1855] 1858, 235) wrote, “thus [the
concertina] conforms to the doctrine of the acousticians, a doctrine entirely
contrary to the practice of musicians. This is a strange anomaly.” Berlioz then
used the concertina as a springboard to launch a condemnation of the entire
speculative musical theoretical tradition:
This ancient endeavor of the acousticians to introduce at all risks the result of
their calculations into the practice of an art based especially on the study of the
impression produced by sounds upon the human ear, is no longer maintainable
now-a-days.
So true is it, that Music rejects it with energy; and can only exist by reject-
ing it . . .
Whence it results that the sounds so-called irreconcilable by the
acousticians are perfectly reconciled by musical practice; and that those rela-
tions declared false by calculation, are accepted as true by the ear, which
takes no account of inappreciable differences, nor of the reasonings of
mathematicians. . . .
These ridiculous arguings, these ramblings of men of letters, these
absurd conclusions of the learned, possessed—all of them—with the mania of
speaking and writing upon an art of which they are ignorant, can have no other
result than that of making musicians laugh. (Berlioz [1855] 1858, 236–37)
Writing in 1855, Berlioz had no idea how energetic acoustically based
music theory would become in the second half of the century. hermann von
helmholtz’s On the Sensations of Tone appeared in 1863, rejuvenating the specu-
lative tradition by grounding mathematical music theory in empirical, scientific
the concertinist to play a just scale in any key or tune to an
equally tempered piano if so desired. On the Double concer-
tinas described in the same patent, however, the reduction
of accidentals from seven to five made enharmonic substi-
tution a necessity for chord and scale formation. An adver-
tisement for the instrument published by Wheatstone and
Company (n.d. [ca. 1850]) states, “The Double Concertinas
are tuned to the equal temperament, as Pianofortes are now
tuned; this not only dispenses with the extra notes (viz., the
difference between G sharp and A flat, and D sharp and
E flat), which are absolutely required to make the principal
chords sound agreeably on the usual [treble] Concertina, but
also makes the tune in all the keys on the Double Instrument
more equally perfect.” Stuart Eydmann dated the advertise-
ment to approximately 1850 by comparing the prices listed
with those in the Wheatstone sales ledgers. This suggests
that Double concertinas were tuned in equal temperament
from their earliest manufacture, while the treble, tenor, and
baritone concertinas retained their meantone temperament
for at least a decade afterward.
15 Ellis gives a short history on England’s conversion to
equal temperament in his translator’s commentary to Helm-
holtz (Helmholtz [1863] 1912, 548–49). According to Ellis,
the piano manufacturer Broadwood and Sons began to tune
its instruments equally in 1846, and organ tuners followed
suit eight years later. This chronology suggests that the
concertina lagged behind keyboard instruments in adopting
equal temperament by at least a decade.