Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/322



seriously so in others. Exactly what is true of the scale of C is true of every other possible key. This system is admirable for music in which all keys, major and minor, are liable to be used, since whatever effect is produced in one is exactly reproduced in the rest. It also favors enharmonic shifts of every sort. It is noticeable, also, that the sharped intervals are sharper and the flatted intervals flatter than they should be, thus accentuating the alterations from the diatonic scale which led to the nomenclature of the chromatics (a process often observable in the playing of instruments of free intonation, like the violin, and also in singing). On the whole, however, the restfulness of the major thirds is sacrificed to the brilliance and perfection of the fifths and fourths.

It must be added that the above theoretical comparison of the two systems holds good only so far as each is perfectly carried out by tuners and as the instruments stand as they are tuned. Under either of them unconscious or intentional deviations may be made by the tuner, and the structure or condition of the instrument may speedily introduce further changes. It is an uninvestigated subject, how much the peculiarities of the two systems or of their traditional use by tuners has to do with the asserted differences between keys in emotional character.

If it were practicable to make keyboards with fifty-three keys to the octave, it would be possible to play in all scales in pure intonation.

Tuning as a distinct occupation seems to have begun early in the 17th century, and was especially concerned with the harpsichord. In the 18th it steadily became more important, especially as harpsichords and pianos were multiplied. Organ-tuning was still held as a branch of organ-making. Players on all keyboard instruments, however, long continued to act as their own tuners to a large extent.

In the 17th century tuning usually proceeded from F, but in the 18th and since from C or A. The standard pitch of the 18th century was decidedly lower than now, if the few data can be trusted—A=405-422 vibrations per second, as compared with Scheibler's pitch of 1834 (A=440), the now generally accepted 'French pitch' of 1859 (A=435), or the practice of many orchestras till about 1880 (A=450-455). The 'tuning-fork' as a device for preserving a standard pitch is said to have been invented in 1711 by John Shore (d. 1753), a London lutist.