The search for the missing Harrison manuscript
The following text appeared in the New Scientist Magazine in April 97 submitted by Charles Lucy. If you can help in any way with the quest for this document please contact Charles Lucy. We will be most grateful. It is our intention to publish information as it comes in relating to this search so please stay tuned !
It seems to me that we at at a crossroads in musical tuning, similar
to that which mathematics passed, a couple of hundred years ago. Many still
seem to judge the validity of a tuning system only by its proximity to
integer frequency ratios and the harmonics, which are arrived at
by this (to my mind) simplistic logic. From my readings, experiments, and
observations, I am convinced that John Harrison had managed to break through
this barrier in the mid-eighteenth century.
At the end of a very successful scientific career, during which he made
three major new inventions, and "won" the prize for Longitude
with his horological designs, he devoted his last years to the study of
musical tuning. This is a subject very closely akin to his other particular
areas of expertise, i.e.navigation, pendulums, harmonic motion, and the
study of mechanical systems with regard to time..
In
his book Concerning Such Mechanism, (after "slagging off"
his contemporaries), he very clearly states his conclusions: The Natural
Notes of Melody may be derived mathematically from pi. He gives
no experimental details, except that he used monochords, and clearly understood
and criticises WNR (whole number ratio) logic and practice. He seems to
have been criticized for this work, in the same way that his tunings are
criticised today.
[Not for their impracticabilities, tunelessness, or any musical reasons
- (it works exquisitely for musical harmony, modulation, and transposition
for all types of "ethnic" music which I have encountered to date);
yet for its lack of scientific proof].
After CSM ..... was published he wrote a manuscript
HARRISON, John. A True and Full Account of the Foundation of Musick,
or, as principally therein, of the Existance of the Natural Notes of
Melody.
An unpublished manuscript of 182 pp., which is cataloged as item 8961 in
Bibliotheca Chemico-Mathematica issued by Messrs. H. Sotheran of London
in 1921, but has since been lost.
I have seen only one page of this manuscript. It arrived at my London address
from a horological researcher, about ten years ago. I hear that it was
by way of a Folkestone antiquarian bookseller. The page was a diagram of
a clockface, with the note names written around the circumference, and
marks where later steps of fourths and fifths would arrive. It showed the
Large interval at the angle of the radian i.e. 360/(2*pi) = 57.3 degrees.
C was at 6 o'clock and the other naturals were arranged ascending
clockwise.
From this page and the title, I suspect that the missing manuscript revealed
Harrison's experiments. I heard that the offices of Sotheran were destroyed
during the London blitz by a direct hit.
I wish to attempt to reconstruct Harrison's experiments, for I believe
that they will give us much greater insight into his thinking, and possibly
provide us with "scientific proof".
Any help, pointers, or comments about this manuscript will be appreciated.
Should Harrison's "proof" be found to be valid, it will be necessary
to re-examine the traditional scientific assumption that "harmonics"
can only occur at integer frequency ratios.
That would really put the scientific "cat amongst the pigeons"!
Charles Lucy
March '97
lucy@harmonics.com