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Subject:
From:
Barry Jordan <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Barry Jordan <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 14 Nov 1998 10:07:34 +0100
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>         The only example I could imagine of 42nd halving is in extremely old
> organs.  Ancient organs (we're talking medieval) were built with a constant
> diameter throughout the whole rank...
in which case there will be halving at infinity. And the organs of which you
speak had compasses of, at the most, about 25 notes, since they were designed
only to play plainsong very loudly. By the time of the earliest polyphonic
tablatures methods of scaling had been developed which were sometimes rather ad
hoc but considerably more sophisticated than what you describe, and also more
sophisticated than its opposite, the halving of circumference at the octave.
Toepfer's "Normalprogression" is the mathematical mean between these two
extremes.
 
> meaning that the bass sounds stringy while the treble sounds fluty.
With a compass of an octave or two, "bass" and "treble" are very relative terms
indeed. More accurately, IF these instruments had had a bass, it would have been
very stringy indeed, and IF they had a had a treble, it probably wouldn't have
worked at all anymore. The only evidence for the existence of these instruments
is literary and iconographical.
 Sorry,
> but I can't remember the source for all this, anybody out there remember?
Try any book on organ history.
 
Cheers
Barry
 
Barry Jordan
Domorganist/Cathedral organist, Magdeburg
http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/Choir/1586/magdeburg_contents.html
 
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