Temperament
Robin Maconie · 2007
Abstract The idea of dimensioning pitch in equal intervallic steps has logic on its side. In various ways, pitch can be related to length, and as length is a continuum, so one assumes is pitch also. Western stud ies have tended to interpret exotic scales as alternative expressions of equal temperament. A. J. Ellis, the English translator of Helmholtz’s On the Sensations of Tone and an indefatigable annota tor of non-Western scales-as embodied in museum collections of wind and percussion instruments-promoted the view that equal divisions of the octave should be taken as the norm, leading the musicologist Carl Stumpfin 1901 to wonder how the Siamese were supposed to derive an equal-tempered seven-tone scale without the help of logarithm and square root tables (Schneider and Beurmann 1993: 198-9).