Ellis and ET

[Richard Moody]

----- Original Message -----
From: Ron Koval <drwoodwind@hotmail.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2000 11:40 AM
Subject: piano makers; what they say or what they do?


> Thought you might get a kick out of this with the recent ET thread and the
> Steinway key dip difference.
>
>
> Broadwood's Best (this at a time when Broadwood said that they only tuned
in
> ET)
>
> pure.......................13.7................
> C :.............*
> G :.............*
> D :.....................*
> A :...........................*
> E :................................*
> B :.................................*
> F#:.................................*
> Db:.................................*
> Ab:..............................*
> Eb:.............................*
> Bb:.....................*
> F :...............*
> C :.............*
>
> Is it ET if you call it ET?
> Graphman strikes again!
>
> Ron K
>
Hi Ron,  what are your sources?
If this is from Ellis in Helmholtz, then check the methods he (Ellis) used
to
evualuate the tunings. Try to pin down exactly how and what he measured
with.  (an octave of tuning forks 4 cents apart?)  I believe his "measuring"
was within one cent either way, giving a range of two cents. Of course 2
cents is the how much an ET fifth is narrowed. Some of the tunings were two
weeks old or that was the freshest, I would have to read again. The worth of
these statistics in determing how close they came to ET is about that, two
cents.    Now if he had gone out on stage and checked a piano just tuned by
Broadwood's concert tuner that would be interesting.   I think Ellis knew
Hipkins. Hipkins supposidly tuned for Chopin on his tour in England.
Hipkins also claimed to introduce ET to Broadwood factories in the 1850's.
But there is a reference to old man Broadwood writing an article for a
British Philosophic (the word for scientific in those days) journal in 1810
about how to tune ET.  Now THAT would be interesting reading.  Barrie
Heaton, if you are still on this list, could you dig that one up for us? Now
if Hipkins wrote how he learned ET THAT would be just as interesting.

    Another interesting reading in Ellis's appendices is the tuning methods
of three factories.  They all tuned ET by fifths and never checked by
thirds, or so Ellis reported.  This is all the more interesting because
Helmholtz's  (whom Ellis translated) research of partials made possible the
figuring of beat rates of any interval. Ellis himself did not suggest that
ET be checked by thirds, or I couldn't find that he did.  It is a big book
and if I were submitting this for publication I would have to check
again. ---ric