Note 26 — Art. XXI. Essay on Musical Temperament.

A method of rendering changeable the sound of the same pipes in the organ, which had occurred to the writer, but which was not inserted above on account of the supposed difficulty of making the change sufficient in degree, he has since found to have been executed by the Rev. H. Liston, who has succeeded, by means of shaders capable of being brought before the mouths of his pipes by the action of pedals, in giving them three distinct sounds each, varying by two commas. (See the description of his Enharmonic organ, in Rees' Cyc. or Tilloch's Phil. Mag.) His scale embraces 59 intervals to the octave, and is intended to produce perfect harmony in all the keys. But as it will require the use of pedals perpetually, even on the same key, and a ready and perfect knowledge of small musical intervals, which practical musicians can seldom possess, there is no probability that it will ever be extensively adopted. Perhaps, however, four or five sounds, such as D, E, A, D, might be added to the common scale of 12 intervals by means of his mechanism, with advantage. An instrument thus furnished would require the use of pedals but seldom, and would contain chromatic degrees sufficient for the accurate performance of the great mass of organ music.