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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2011
Present-day players of the ‘English’ concertina (see Fig. 1) must make a number of important decisions when delving into and performing the large repertory of art music that was written for the instrument in Victorian England. These decisions become especially critical for those who would perform the music in a manner that may at least approximate the way it may have sounded in the nineteenth century.
1 My essay grows out of the lecture-recitals that I have given with pianist David Cannata and, more recently, with the New York Victorian Consort (with Julia Grella O'Connell, mezzo-soprano, and Francesco Izzo, pianist). I wish to express my thanks to a number of people for their help in connection with this essay: Mr Wim Wakker, Director of Concertina Connection (Helmond, NL) and himself an extraordinary concertinist, for having read an early draft and for the many years of stimulating discussion about the instrument and its music. Thanks also to Messrs Robert Gaskins (San Francisco) and Wes Williams (North Cadbury, Somerset), both of whom checked sources for me and shared information from their own research; in addition, Mr Gaskins also read an early draft of the essay. Finally, Messrs Alexander C. N. Mackenzie of Ord and Kenneth Mobbs (both of Bristol) were kind enough to read the section on tuning and temperaments (§2).
2 The dates for the instruments – whether of manufacture or first sale – are derived from two series of Wheatstone & Co. ledgers now housed at the Horniman Museum, London; the nineteenth-century ledgers form part of the Wayne Archive (hereafter HMWA), those from the twentieth century, part of the Dickinson Archive (HMDA). Both the latter series of five volumes (SD 01–05) and the twelve volumes in the Wayne Archive (C1046–1056 and C104a) are available online at the Horniman website: www.horniman.info. For a brief description of the nineteenth-century ledgers, see Stephen Chambers, ‘Some Notes on Lachenal Concertina Production and Serial Numbers’, Papers of the International Concertina Association, 1 (2004): 15–16, n. 4 (also online at www.concertina.org/pica.php and www.concertina.com/chambers); I provide a fuller description in my ‘Ladies in the Wheatstone Ledgers: The Gendered Concertina in Victorian England, 1835–1870’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 39 (2006), 1–234.
3 One can gain some idea of the size and nature of the repertory around the middle of the century from the Ewer & Co.’s Universal Circulating Music Library (London: Ewer & Co. 1860): 232–7,Google Scholar which lists 447 titles under ‘Music for the Concertina' (Nos. 31395–842), though this includes multiple items within a single collection; see Atlas, Allan W., The Wheatstone English Concertina in Victorian England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)Google Scholar; on the Ewer Catalogue, see Temperley, Nicholas, ‘Ballroom and Drawing-Room Music’, in The Romantic Age, 1800–1914, ed. Temperley, Nicholas. The Athlone History of Music in Britain (London: The Athlone Press, 1981): 113Google Scholar.
4 Briefly, free-reed instruments have metal reeds that vibrate freely through an aperture in the frames in which they are mounted (see Fig. 3a, on p. 42); in addition to the various types of concertinas (see n. 6), such instruments include the harmonica (Christian F.L. Buschmann, 1821), accordion (Cyrillus Demian, 1829), harmonium (Alexander François Debain, 1842), and bandoneón (of tango fame – Heinrich Band, 1844), to name just a few that have continued to flourish up the present day, while Asian ancestors include the Chinese sheng, Japanese shô, and Lao-Thai khaen; see Howarth, James, ‘Free-Reed Instruments’, in Musical Instruments through the Ages, ed. Baines, Anthony (New York: Penguin Press, 1961)Google Scholar; there is a comprehensive collection of essays about a wide range of free-reed instruments in Lustig, Monika, ed., Harmonium und Handharmonika: 20. Musikinstrumentenbau-Symposium, Michaelstein, 19. bis 21. November 1999. Michaelsteiner Konferenzenberichte, 62 (Michaelstein: Stiftung Kloster Michaelstein, 2002)Google Scholar; see also the four volumes of The Free-Reed Journal (1999–2002), published by Pendragon Press for The Center for the Study of Free-Reed Instruments at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York.
5 The most comprehensive biography of Wheatstone, who played a major role in the development of telegraphy (and after whom the so-called ‘Wheatstone Bridge’ – an electrical circuit that measures resistances – is named, though he did not invent it), is Bowers, Brian, Sir Charles Wheatstone, FRS 1802–1875, rev. ed. Institution of Electrical Engineers History of Technology Series, 29 (London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, 2001)Google Scholar; see also Dostrovsky, Sigalia, ‘Wheatstone, Charles’, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Gillispie, Charles Coulston (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), xiv: 288–91;Google Scholar both of these deal with Wheatstone primarily as a physicist.
6 On the instrument’s Victorian repertory and critical reception, see Atlas, , The Wheatstone English Concertina, 48–75;Google Scholar on its popularity in fashionable circles in particular, see Atlas, Allan W., ‘Who Bought Concertinas in the Winter of 1851? A Glimpse at the Sales Accounts of Wheatstone & Co.’, in Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies, 1, ed. Zon, Bennett (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 55–87,Google Scholar and ‘Ladies in the Wheatstone Ledgers’. The Victorians knew two other types of concertinas, both of which, like the English, continue to flourish today: (1) the ‘Anglo’ (more accurately, ‘Anglo-German’ or ‘Anglo-Continental’), derived from the diatonic German Konzertina (once adopted in England it acquired chromatic capabilities), on which each button produces two pitches depending on the direction of the bellows; though initially identified mainly with street musicians, the ‘Anglo’ eventually became the concertina of choice among players of traditional music (it is, for example, the only concertina used in the Irish tradition); (2) the ‘Duet’, like the English, produces one pitch per button, but assigns its distinct treble and bass registers to separate hands in such a way as to promote the playing of a melody with a piano-like accompaniment; this concertina became particularly popular both in the music halls and with the street-corner Salvation Army bands. For surveys of the various types of concertinas, see Atlas, ‘Concertina’, in Grove Music Online, ed. Laura Macy (www.grovemusic.com; accessed 14 July 2004, hereafter GMOL, with same date of accession); Dunkel, Maria, ‘Harmonikainstrumente’, in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, rev. ed., ed. Finscher, Ludwig (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1996), Sachteil, iv, cols 168–210;Google Scholar three important studies on the concertina’s role in traditional music are hAllmhuráin, Gearóid Ó, ‘The Concertina in the Traditional Music of Clare’, PhD dissertation, Queen’s University of Belfast (1995),Google ScholarEydmann, Stuart, ‘The Concertina as an Emblem of the Folk Music Revival in the British Isles’, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 4 (1995): 41–50, andCrossRefGoogle ScholarWorrall, Dan, The Anglo Concertina Music of William Kimber (London: English Folk Dance and Song Society, 2005)Google Scholar; on the music hall, see Honri, Percy, Working the Halls: The Honris in One Hundred Years of British Music Hall (Farnborough: D.C. Heath, 1973)Google Scholar; the German Konzertina receives thorough treatment in Dunkel, Maria, Bandonion und Konzertina: Ein Beitrag zur Darstellung des Instrumententyps. Berliner musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten, 30 (Munich and Salzburg: Katzbichler, 1987)Google Scholar.
7 See Atlas, , The Wheatstone English Concertina, vii; ‘George Gissing’s Concertina’, The Journal of Musicology, 17 (1999): 304–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar (the latter also online at www.concertina.com/atlas). A note on this fine website: developed by Robert Gaskins, it aims, among other things, to make available original documents pertaining to the history of the concertina (all types), ‘reprint’ recent articles (though there is even a dissertation) about the instrument that had appeared in scholarly journals that generally escape the attention of most concertinists (always with permission and always with a full citation of the original publication), post previously unpublished essays (carefully vetted), and highlight the life and career of John Hill MacCann, a noted player of the Duet concertina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (about whom Mr Gaskins is writing a biography).
8 Though I cannot even begin to estimate their number, I can note that, as of March 2004, the lively website www.concertina.net had 3,416 registered users (information from Mr Paul Schwartz, who developed the website). And since few concertinists will be reading this journal, the essay will – with the kind permission of Ashgate Publishing – eventually be posted online at www.concertina.com/atlas.
9 From this point on, all references to the concertina are to the English concertina in particular.
10 On the ups and downs of the concertina’s social status, see Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, 3–11; ‘George Gissing’s Concertina’; ‘Collins, Count Fosco, and the Concertina’, Wilkie Collins Society Journal, 2 (1999): 57–61Google Scholar (also online at www.concertina.com/atlas); ‘Who Bought Concertinas in the Winter of 1851?’; ‘Ladies in the Wheatstone Ledgers’. To be sure, the concertina had already entered the music hall by April/May 1851 at the latest, when Alfred B. Sedgwick appeared at the Royal Music Hall (Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, 57, n. 45); Sedgwick was also a member of the Concertina Quartett, which made its debut at the Hanover Square Rooms on 12 June 1844, and for which landmark concert there is a highly favourable review in the Musical World, 19 (21 June 1844): 206 (Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, 52); by the end of November 1851, Sedgwick had emigrated to New York (he lived in Brooklyn, then a separate city), where he enjoyed a successful career as a composer of theatre music and continued to play the concertina, often with his son Charlie, who played the bass concertina (reviews of his performances are scattered throughout the New York Times and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, both of which are now conveniently available online at http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/nytimes/advanced search/html and www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/eagle/index/htm, respectively; on Sedgwick’s career as a theatre composer, see Meckna, Michael, The Collected Works of Alfred B. Sedgwick. Garland Nineteenth-Century American Musical Theater Series (New York: Garland, 1994)Google Scholar; see also Brown, James D. and Stratton, Stephen S., British Musical Biography (London: William Reeves, 1897/reprint: New York: Da Capo Press, 1971): 365. On the concertina bands, seeGoogle ScholarPickles, Nigel, ‘The Heckmondwike English Concertina Band’, International Concertina Association Newsletter, 351 (October 1987): 4–8;Google Scholar there is a photograph of the 1909, 21-man ‘edition’ of the band in Concertina & Squeezebox, 23 (summer 1990), 26–7.
11 A reliable outline of the main vicissitudes of Wheatstone & Co. appears in Wes Williams, ‘The Concertina History Resource: A Timeline of Snippets of Concertina History’, online at www.lvcott.fsnet.co.uk/events.htm; see also Wayne, Neil, ‘Concertina Book – Final Edit’, unpublished manuscript (1986): 29–51Google Scholar (a copy in HMWA), and ‘The Wheatstone English Concertina’, The Galpin Society Journal, 44 (1991): 117–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar (also online at www.free-reed.co.uk/galpin); on Lachenal, see two important articles by Stephen Chambers: ‘Louis Lachenal: “Engineer and Concertina Manufacturer” – Part 1’, The Free-Reed Journal, 1 (1999): 7–18 (also online at www.concertina.com/chambers), and ‘Some Notes on Lachenal Concertina Production’, 6–23. Though we cannot date the beginning of Lachenal’s full-scale production of its Edeophone any more precisely than the early 1890s, the firm seems to have produced a prototype by 1889 at the latest, its Registered Design having been entered on 27 July of that year; see Chambers, ‘Some Notes on Lachenal Concertina Production’, 11; it was also in 1889 (September–October) that Wheatstone began production of its Æola (a full decade earlier than the date given in Wayne, ‘The Wheatstone English Concertina’, 141); my thanks to Robert Gaskins for this earlier date (private communication, 30 July 2002).
12 My explanations assume a period instrument with steel reeds (but see p. 45). I am grateful to Wim Wakker for some of the technical information that follows; see also Wayne, , ‘The Wheatstone English Concertina’, 137–9,Google Scholar which, however, generally treats these matters in a non-musical context. On the acoustics of free-reed instruments, a subject that has only lately gained currency (enough so, however, that the Acoustical Society of America devoted an entire session to it at its 1999 Annual Meeting), see, among others: Fletcher, Neville H. and Rossing, Thomas D., The Physics of Musical Instruments, rev. ed. (New York: Springer, 1998): 413–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar (note that the original publication of 1991 lacked these few pages on free reeds); Cottingham, James P., Free-Reed Acoustics: Some Experimental and Theoretical Studies of the American Reed Organ – A Collection of Papers from the Student-Faculty Research Program in Musical Acoustics at Coe College (Cedar Rapids, IA: n.p., 1999)Google Scholar; this extremely valuable compilation of six essays can be obtained from Professor Cottingham, Department of Physics, Coe College; Johnston, R. B., ‘Pitch Control in Harmonica Playing’, Acoustics Australia, 15 (1987): 69–75,Google Scholar which deals with the technique of ‘pitch bending’ on the harmonica; Hilaire, Arthur O. St, Wilson, Theodore A. and Beavers, Gordon S., ‘Aerodynamic Excitation of the Harmonium Reed’, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 49 (1971): 803–16;CrossRefGoogle ScholarTonon, Tom, ‘Reed Cavity Design and Resonance’, Papers of the International Concertina Association, 2 (2005), 30–51Google Scholar (and online at www.concertina.org/pica/php); and Richter, Gotthard, Akustische Probleme bei Akkordeons und Mundharmonikas: I. Einführung in die allgemeinen Grundlagen; II. Untersuchungen spezieller Phänomene (Bergkamen: Schmüling, 1985)Google Scholar; note that only the article by Tonon deals specifically with concertina reeds, which differ somewhat from those for, say, the accordion or the harmonium.
13 Developed by the metallurgist Stanley P. Rockwell in 1919, the Rockwell scale measures the surface hardness of steel and other metals and alloys; for a comprehensive discussion, see Low, Samuel L., Rockwell Hardness Measurements of Metallic Materials. National Institute of Standards and Technology Practice Guide, Special Publication 960-5 (Washington, DC: National Institute of Standards, 2001)Google Scholar; my thanks to Mr Jeffrey Mason, Hewlett-Woodmere Public Library, for directing me to this item, which also appears online at www. msel.nist.gov/practiceguides/sp960_5.pdf; there are also short descriptions of the scale in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, 9th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002), viii: 366; x: 724Google Scholar.
14 A comparison of the length of two reeds for c' underscores the difference: Wheatstone No. 9889 (initial sale in 1856) = 26.36 mm; Wheatstone No. 24877, an Æola (manufactured in 1909) = 29.14 mm; my thanks to Wim Wakker for measuring the reeds with precision instruments. Note that this difference in length of approximately 10 per cent decreases in the reeds for the higher notes.
15 The earliest baffles were made out of a thin strip of wood – pine or spruce – and actually amplified the first few harmonics in order to compensate for the weakness of the reeds themselves. On baffles, see Robert Gaskins, ‘Baffles for Maccann Duet Concertinas’ (especially § I/3, ‘Original Baffles on Vintage Concertinas’), online at www.concertina.com/baffles.
16 All dates of publication for the music and the method books follow the British Library Integrated Catalogue, online at http://catalogue.bl.uk. Although this catalogue lists dates of acquisition, these are generally assumed to coincide with the dates of publication. Nevertheless, Robert Gaskins has plausibly questioned whether this is always the case with respect to the dates of Wheatstone & Co.’s concertina publications (communication of 27 October 2002). Unless otherwise noted, all items cited were published in London.
17 On Regondi, who was also one of the leading guitarists of the period, see Douglas Rogers, ‘Giulio Regondi: Guitarist, Concertinist or Melophonist? A Reconnaissance’, Guitar Review, xci (fall 1992): 1–9; xcii (winter 1993): 14–21; xcvii (spring 1994): 11–17; Tom Lawrence, ‘Giulio Regondi and the Concertina in Ireland’, Concertina World: Newsletter of the International Concertina Association 411 (Jul. 1998): 21–5 (also online at www.concertina. com/Lawrence); Jacobs, Helmut C., Der junge Gitarren- und Concertinavirtuose Giulio Regondi: Eine kritische Dokumentation seiner Konzertreise durch Europa, 1840 und 1841 (Bochum: Augemus, 2001)Google Scholar; ‘Giulio Regondi’, in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, rev. ed., ed. Finscher, Ludwig (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2005), Personenteil, xiii: cols 1443–5;Google Scholar Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, 48–54; ‘Giulio Regondi: Two Newly Discovered Letters’, The Free-Reed Journal, iv (2002): 70–84;Google Scholar ‘Collins, Count Fosco, and the Concertina’, 56–60; and ‘A 41-Cent Emendation’, 609–17 (the last three articles also online at www.concertina.com/atlas); Susan Wollenberg, ‘Giulio Regondi at Oxford’, Papers of the International Concertina Association, 3 (2006): 18–24 (also online at www.concertina.org/pica.php); Music at Oxford in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (New York, 2003): 171.Google Scholar On Regondi as guitarist, see Button, Stewart, The Guitar in England: 1800–1924, 100–13, 126–33 (New York: Garland, 1989):Google Scholar Alessandro Boris Amisich, Giulio Regondi (1822–1872): concertista e compositore del romanticismo – documentazione (Milan: n.p., 1995), and a series of six articles by him: two in the Italian journal Guit Art: ‘Giulio Regondi’, ii/8 (1997): 24–49, ‘La prima tournée europea di Giulio Regondi. Nuovi elementi’, viii/29 (2000): 32–9; and four in Il ‘Fronimo’: ‘Giulio Regondi: Un bambino prodigio’, xi/45 (October 1983): 32–4; ‘Giulio Regondi: La carriera concertistica negli anni ’40’, xv/58 (January 1987): 34–43; ‘Giulio Regondi: Compositore e concertista’, xvi/62 (January 1988), 28–40; ‘Giulio Regondi: Dieci studi ed una foto’, xix/76 (July 1991): 38–45. There is a modern edition of Regondi’s works for guitar in Giulio Regondi: The Complete Works for Guitar, ed. Wynberg, Simon (Monaco: Chanterelle, 1981),Google Scholar which, however, must be supplemented by Giulio Regondi: Ten Etudes for Guitar, ed. Holmquist, John (Columbus, OH: Editions Orphée, 1990)Google Scholar; unfortunately there is no such edition of his much more substantial output for English concertina.
18 One can compare the sound of the Victorian repertory on period and modern instruments by listening to the following: for a period instrument, The Great Regondi: Original Compositions by the 19th Century’s Unparalleled Guitarist & Concertinist, The Regondi Guild, Douglas Rogers, concertina, Bridge Records BCD 9039 (1993) and 9055 (1994), which includes recordings of a number of pieces by Regondi, including one for unaccompanied baritone concertina; for a modern instrument, Concertina Landscape, Dave Townsend, concertina, Serpent Press SER 006 (1998), with the ‘Serenade’ from Molique’s Six Characteristic Pieces, op. 61; Music of Dickens and his Time, The Mellstock Band, Dave Townsend, concertina, Beautiful Jo Records BEJOCD-9 (1996), with a performance of Joseph Warren’s, Popular Melodies with Variations [on ‘Home, Sweet Home’]; finally, there are sound files www.concertinaconnection.com/soundfiles.htp recorded by Wim Wakker, with excerpts from a number of pieces by Regondi, Benedict, Macfarren, Molique, George Case and James Harcourt, some performed on period instruments, some on modern instruments, and some with images of the instruments on which they are played. Finally, listen also to my own recordings of Molique and Regondi on the three-CD collection English International, Folksounds Records (forthcoming).
19 Wayne’s remark, in ‘The Wheatstone English Concertina’, 132, that ‘the internal construction of the “standard” 48-key English concertina changed little from 1846 onwards’ misses the point to some extent; in general, Wayne too often emphasizes the ‘appearance’ of the instrument (both internal and external) at the expense of the musical context.
20 Wayne, ‘The Wheatstone English Concertina’, 138, upon which I draw for the basic outline of events.
21 Though the Price List of Treble, Tenor, Baritone, Bass & Double Bass Concertinas and Æolas, Manufactured by C. Wheatstone & Co., Inventors and Patentees, likely issued in the early or mid-1910s, claims that ‘steel vibrators [reeds] were first introduced in the year 1862, for the use of Signor Giulio Regondi and Mr. Richard Blagrove’, there are certainly concertinas from the mid-1850s on – my own Wheatstone no. 6760 among them (see Fig. 1a) – that have steel reeds and show no obvious signs of having had an earlier set of brass reeds replaced. Indeed, steel and brass would co-exist, as it were, until the 1880s, at which time brass reeds more or less fell out of use (though they continued to be used in inexpensive Anglos and even in good Æolas that were produced specifically for the lucrative market among English military personnel in India, where steel reeds did not take well to the exceptionally humid climate). In general, Wheatstone’s publicity material must always be taken with a grain of salt. The Price List cited must date from after 1908, the date of the latest ‘Grand Prize’ proudly trumpeted on the title page, and from before 1917, when numerals – absent on the price list – were added to the London postal codes. There are a number of early twentieth-century Wheatstone Price Lists in the private collection of Mr Chris Algar (Barleycorn Concertinas, Stoke-on-Trent), all of which appear online at www.concertina.com/price lists/English. My thanks to Wes Williams for information about the postal codes.
22 All the recordings and sound files of period instruments cited in note 18 (except for my recording of Regondi) utilize instruments with steel reeds.
23 My thanks to Wim Wakker for the explanation.
24 The title page also bears the title Der [sic!] Engel Lied (and carries the subtitle Légend valaque). Although Braga originally wrote the obbligato for cello (his own instrument), the Schott edition notes that it can just as well be performed on violin or flute (it also provides texts in Italian, German and English), and it sounds just as wonderful on the concertina. The piece was popular – indeed, it sustained Braga’s reputation – in the early twentieth century thanks in part to John McCormack and Alma Gluck, both of whom made it part of their repertories (Gluck often performed it with her husband, the violinist Efrem Zimbalist); there is also a transcription for violin by Fritz Kreisler.
25 In part I draw here on Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, 39–47.
26 The piece is edited, together with a reproduction of the title page, in Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, 87–107. Regondi also performed Warren’s Introduction with Variations and Coda on The Last Rose of Summer (see Ex. 5 on p. 53. On Warren (1804–1881), organist (at the Roman Catholic Church of St Mary, Chelsea, from 1843), music historian and antiquarian, and prolific composer and arranger for the concertina, see Atlas, , The Wheatstone English Concertina, 57, 76–7;Google ScholarBrown, and Stratton, , British Musical Biography, 434Google Scholar; King, Alex Hyatt, Some British Collectors of Music, c. 1600–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), passim.Google Scholar It was at the 1837 Birmingham Festival that Regondi likely met both Mendelssohn (his oratiorio St Paul was performed there) and William Sterndale Bennett, meetings that may have led to his appearance at Leipzig’s Gewandhaus on 31 March 1841, as part of a programme that included the premiere of Schumann’s Symphony No. 1 in B; see Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, 50–51 and Plate 10; see also Jacobs, Der junge Gitarren- und Concertinavirtuose Giulio Regondi, 86–88 and 89–92 (for the entire programme).
27 As already noted, there is no separate button for the a'''in the highest octave (see Fig. 2).
28 In addition to the reference cited in note 25, see Helmholtz, Hermann L.F., On the Sensations of Tone, trans. and ed. Ellis, Alexander J., 6th ed. (New York: Dover, 1948): 434Google Scholar (hereafter Helmholtz/Ellis, with edition). Ellis (1814–1890), musician-mathematician-philologist, was himself familiar with the concertina, having purchased instruments on at least 1 November 1838 and 10 September 1847, dates on which his name appears in the Wheatstone sales ledger C104a (pp. 13, 67) in HMWA. In fact, Ellis experimented with various tunings on the instrument, and, in Helmholtz/Ellis, 2nd ed. (1885): 470, describes a ‘Just English Concertina’ which he had had specially tuned by the firm of Lachenal; see also, Padgham, Charles A., The Well-Tempered Organ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986): 55.Google Scholar Sir Charles Wheatstone explains his ideas about tuning and temperaments in ‘The Harmonic Diagram Invented by C. Wheatstone’ (1824) and its accompanying pamphlet, ‘An Explanation of the Harmonic Diagram Invented by C. Wheatstone’; the ‘Harmonic Diagram’ is preserved in the British Library, Music Division, shelf-mark M. 23, and is reproduced in Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, Pl. 8; and ‘A 41-Cent Emendation’, 614; the pamphlet is reprinted in The Scientific Papers of Sir Charles Wheatstone (London: Taylor and Francis, 1879): 14–20.Google Scholar Briefly, Wheatstone divided the whole tone into major and minor semitones, and then divided each major semitone into a minor semitone and diesis, calling the resulting scale the ‘enharmonic’ scale (Scientific Papers, 15–17). On Wheatstone as acoustician, see William Gryllis Adams, ‘On the Musical Inventions and Discoveries of the Late Sir Charles Wheatstone, F.R.S.’, Proceedings of the Musical Association, 2 (1875–76): 85–94; Benjamin R. Gossick, ‘Wheatstone’s Work on Acoustics’, Catgut Acoustical Society Newsletter, 27 (May 1977), 6–9.
29 Grande traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration modernes (Paris, 1855): 287Google Scholar; Berlioz would have become familiar with the concertina when he served as a juror for musical instruments at the Great Exhibition of 1851; see Holomon, D. Kern, Berlioz (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989): 423–5.Google Scholar Wheatstone & Co. exhibited five concertinas at the Exhibition; see Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, 1851. Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue (London, 1851): 469–70;Google Scholar see also Peter, and Mactaggart, Ann, Musical Instruments in the 1851 Exhibition (Welwyn: Mac & Me, 1986): 60Google Scholar; and the Illustrated London News, supplement to vol. xix, no. 512 (23 August 1851).
30 On Chidley, see Chambers, ‘Some Notes on Lachenal Concertina Production’, 20, n. 18. For information about the method books cited, see Merris, Randall C., ‘Instruction Manuals for the English, Anglo, and Duet Concertina: An Annotated Bibliography’, The Free-Reed Journal, 4 (2002): 91–2, 95 (and online at www.concertina.com/merris, where it is periodically updated)Google Scholar.
31 Minasi is listed as a professor of pianoforte, voice and concertina, residing at 16 Brecknock Place, Camden Town, in the Musical Directory, Register and Almanack, and Royal Academy of Music Calendar for the Year 1855 (Rudall, Rose & Carte, 1855): 65 (my thanks to Professor Deborah Rohr for having called this reference to my attention).
32 On Case, who was one of the original members of the Concertina Quartett (see note 10) and a prolific arranger for the instrument, see Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, 56–7; Rogers, ‘Giulio Regondi’, Pt III, 17, note 29; Brown and Stratton, British Musical Biography, 81; Matthews, Betty, The Royal Society of Musicians of Great Britain: List of Members 1738–1984 (London: The Society, 1985)Google Scholar; John Charles Ward, ‘The English Concertina’, Musical News, 25 (21 August 1891), 511; and, for his activities as a manufacturer of instruments, Wayne, ‘Concertina Book – Final Edit’, 55–8.
33 Helmholtz/Ellis, 2nd ed., 549. I emphasize the word ‘could’ in light of Alexander C.N. Mackenzie of Ord’s persuasive arguments that pre-equal-tempered English pianos (and at least some organs, which came around to equal temperament even more slowly than the piano) were just as – perhaps even more – likely to have been tuned in one or another of the so-called ‘well’ – or ‘unequal’ – temperaments in which the various keys are truly unequal and retain a tonal character of their own; see Mackenzie, Alexander C.N. of Ord, ‘The Well-Tuned Organ: An Introduction to Keyboard Temperaments in 18th and 19th Century England’, British Institute for Organ Studies Journal, 3 (1979): 56–72,Google Scholar and ‘The Adoption of Equal-Temperament Tuning – A Performing Imperative or A Fashionable Fad?’, British Institute for Organ Studies Journal, 27 (2003): 91–111;Google Scholar in addition, I am grateful to Mr Mackenzie of Ord for his kind communication of 27 April 2004. On the various ‘well’ temperaments, see Jorgensen, Owen H., Tuning: Containing the Perfection of Eighteenth-Century Temperament, the Lost Art of Nineteenth-Century Temperament and the Science of Equal Temperament (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1991), passimGoogle Scholar; Padgham, The Well-Tuned Organ, passim; Donahue, Thomas, A Guide to Musical Temperament (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005): 25–57Google Scholar.
34 See, for example, the review of Giulio Regondi’s Dresden recital of 26 October 1846 (his accompanist was the well-known Madame Louise Dulcken, sister of the violinist– composer Ferdinand David and piano teacher to the royal household) in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, x/viii/50 (16 December 1846), cols 853–4, in which the reviewer – ‘Dr. J.S.’ – having heard the mean-tone concertina paired with a piano that was presumably tuned in equal temperament (see below), writes – and without a trace of Berlioz’s contempt – that the concertina is characterized by ‘wirklicher Chromatic, d.h. verschiedenen Tasten z.B. für es und dis’. The entire review is printed in Jacobs, Der junge Gitarren- und Concertinavirtuose Giulio Regondi, 241–3; the excerpt just cited is also quoted in Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, 43; see also, Dunkel, Bandonion und Konzertina, 7, who takes note of the reviewer’s nonchalance with respect to the concertina’s ‘chromatic’ tuning. That the piano at Regondi’s Dresden recital would likely have been tuned in equal temperament seems evident from the research of Thomas McGeary, ‘German-Austrian Keyboard Temperaments and Tuning Methods, 1770–1840: Evidence from Contemporary Sources’, Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society, 15 (1989), 90–118.Google Scholar Finally, on the Continental tradition of pairing instruments – keyboard with non-keyboard (or voice) – that used contrasting temperaments, see Chesnut, John Hind, ‘Mozart’s Teaching of Intonation’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 30 (1977), 254–71;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBoyden, David D., ‘Prelleur, Gemininai, and Just Intonation’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 4 (1951), 202–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 Though Pat Robson, ‘Mainly About Concertinas’, English Folk Dance and Song Society, 45/2 (summer 1983): 4–5; Brian Hayden, ‘Fingering Systems’, Concertina Magazine, 16 (1986): 22; and Richard Carlin, ‘Dating Wheatstone Concertinas’, Mugwumps, 7/1 (June 1981): 17, all propose the early 1860s as the time of the conversion (with Carlin allowing for the production of some equal-tempered instruments in the 1850s), none of them provides any evidence; moreover, none of them considers the harmonically more adventurous music that was beginning to be written for the instrument from the mid-1850s on.
36 There is a copy of the catalogue (a two-page pamphlet), titled The Concertina, A New Musical Instrument and dated January 1848, in HMWA, C824; it is available online at www. concertina.com/docs/wheatstone-pricelist-1848-C824.pdf and (in the form of a transcription) in Chambers, ‘Louis Lachenal’, 16–18. The Wheatstone sales ledgers themselves begin to include prices for instruments sold starting with ledger C1047, on 1 January 1851.
37 Cawdell, , A Short Account of the English Concertina: Its Uses and Capabilities, Facility of Acquirement, and other Advantages (London: William Cawdell, 1865): 6 (available online at www.concertina.com/cawdell).Google Scholar
38 There is a copy of the catalogue, without signature, in HMWA. On the confusion surrounding the term ‘unequal’ temperament with reference to mean tone, see the articles by Mackenzie of Ord cited in note 33.
39 Helmholtz/Ellis, 6th ed., 446.Google Scholar
40 Ward, ‘The English Concertina’, 511; on Ward, who was organist and assistant director of the well-known Henry Leslie Choir, see Brown and Stratton, British Musical Biography, 432. We still find reference to ‘inferior’ concertinas ‘being tuned on an obsolete system called unequal [surely mean-tone] temperament, whereby some of the chords are too smooth in tune, while the remainder are too rough to be endured by the correct ear’ in the ninth edition of Joseph Warren’s Instructions for Concertina (Wheatstone, 1905); Merris, ‘Instruction Manuals’, 99, dates the first edition from c. 1844; there is a facsimile of the ninth edition published by Hands on Music (Oxford, 1998).
41 On Pratten (1824–1868), who was best known in his own day as a flautist, see Brown and Stratton, British Musical Biography, 326; he also played concertina and published a method book for the instrument: Complete Instruction for the Concertina, Pt I (Campbell, Ranford, 1856). He was married to Catherina Josepha (née Pelzer), herself a first-rate guitarist and concertinist; see Harrison, Frank Mott, Reminiscences of Madame Sidney Pratten (Bournemouth: Barnes and Mullins, 1899)Google Scholar; Button, The Guitar in England, 113–17, 130–39; Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, 1, n. 4, 57; we might note that Madame Pratten’s father, the guitarist Ferdinand Pelzer (1801–1860), also wrote a tutor for the concertina, A Practical Guide to the Concertina – though seemingly lost, it is known through a citation in the 1860 Ewer Catalogue, Part II, § xxxvii, p. 237, No. 31841 (see note 2); on the Pratten and Pelzer tutors, see Merris, ‘Instruction Manuals’, 95–6.
42 On Blagrove (?1827–1892), brother of the violinist Henry Gamble Blagrove and himself a first-rank violist – he played in the Philharmonic Society Orchestra and taught at the Royal Academy of Music – see Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, 54–6; Christina Bashford, ‘Blagrove’, in GMOL; Brown and Stratton, British Musical Biography, 50–51. We might note that Henry Gamble Blagrove may also have played the concertina; at the very least he is recorded in HMWA, Wheatstone ledger C1048 (p. 68), as returning an instrument on 19 December 1853 (or was he simply running an errand for Richard?).
43 There is a further note at the bottom of the page: ‘It is always best to let the Piano Tuner have one of our tested Forks, being preferable to taking the pitch from the Concertina’, for which forks Wheatstone’s charged 2s/6d. A 1929 Price List adds that Wheatstone’s will also tune its instruments to ‘New Philharmonic (Low) Pitch (C = 522Hz)’. The earliest notice that refers specifically to a' = 440Hz seems to appear in an American edition of a c. 1935 Price List (online at www.concertina.com/pricelists/Wheatstone-English).
44 Ellis, , ‘The History of Musical Pitch’, Journal of the Society of the Arts, 28 (1880): 330, 335–6;Google Scholar reprinted in Studies in the History of Musical Pitch: Monographs by Alexander J. Ellis and Arthur Mendel (Buren: Fritz Knuf, 1968): 47, 52–3;Google Scholar see also Arthur Mendel, ‘Pitch in Western Music since 1500: A Re-examination’, Acta musicologica, 50 (1978): 87. Note that Ellis qualifies the a' = 452.5Hz by pointing out that it represents the ‘mean’ for the Philharmonic tuning.
45 All four of the Victorian instruments on which I play have been retuned to a' = 440Hz, including the one that I have had tuned (by Wim Wakker) to the so-called ‘well-temperament No. 1’ of Thomas Young as described in his ‘Outlines of Experiments and Inquiries Respecting Sound and Light’, Philosophical Transactions, 90 (1800): 106–50; on Young’s tuning, which has major thirds that become wider as they move symmetrically (sharpward and flatward) around the circle of fifths from C–E (narrowest at 392 cents) to F–A(widest at 408 cents), see Jorgensen, Tuning, 251–65 and passim; J. Murray Barbour, Tuning and Temperament: A Historical Survey (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1953): 12–13, 163, 181, 184 (and see below, note 61); Padgham, The Well-Tuned Organ, 88–91; Donahue, A Guide to Musical Temperament, 54. Audience reactions to the instrument with Young’s tuning when played against an equal-tempered piano is that it ‘sets off’ the concertina and gives it an ‘edge’, and so ‘prevents it from being absorbed into and overpowered by the piano’. Though it might seem easy enough to determine the precise pitch to which any individual period instrument was tuned, we should remember that, even if such an instrument retains its original reeds, it has, for obvious reasons, usually been retuned to equal temperament and a' = 440Hz at one point or another in its history. My own Wheatstone No. 6760 (see Fig. 1), which retains its original steel reeds, is an example of such an instrument.
46 Six-fold bellows were introduced only in the early twentieth century, and then mainly on models intended for professionals.
47 The three-to-one relationship using the same amount of air on each side of the ‘equation’ is possible for three reasons: I play the last three segments of the scale faster than the first, I play them legato (as opposed to the more detached opening segment), and the higher notes always use less air.
48 Some Victorian instruction manuals draw an analogy between the manipulation of the bellows and the use of the bow on a string instrument; see, for example, ‘Signor’ [James] Alsepti’s The Modern English Concertina Method (Lachenal, 1895), where, I think, the analogy is carried to a point somewhere between absurdity and downright charlatanry. I discuss the use of the bellows at some length in Contemplating the Concertina: An Historically-Informed Tutor for the English Concertina (Amherst, MA: The Button Box, 2003): 27–41.Google Scholar It is interesting – and somewhat dismaying – to contrast the lack of attention that modern concertina methods (and players in general) have given to the use of the bellows (I know of no detailed discussion other than my own) with the painstaking attention to the topic in manuals for – and histories of – the accordion: Lech Puchnowski, Tongestaltung und Balgführung auf dem Akkordeon (Trossingen: Verlag ‘Der Volksmusiklehrer’, 1966)Google Scholar; Puchnowski, and Fett, Armin, Balgführung und Tongestaltung: Der neue Weg zum Akkordeonspiel (Vienna, Weltmusik Wien, 1968)Google Scholar; Lips, Friedrich, The Art of Bayan Playing: Technique, Interpretation, and Performance of Playing the Accordion Artistically, trans. Walshe, W.A., ed. Schmülling, Ulrich (Kamen: Schmülling, 2000; originally published in Russian, 1985)Google Scholar; Hans Luck, Die Balgininstrumente: Ihre historische Entwicklung bis 1945. Handbuch der Harmonika Instrumente, 5. Schriften zur Akkordeonsistik/2 (Kamen: Schmülling, 1997). The discrepancy underscores the difference in the present-day reception of the two instruments. Whereas the concertina is now identified almost entirely with various traditions of folk music and, to a large extent, with amateur music-making, the accordion – more specifically, the chromatic, concert, free-bass button accordion (or bayan) – has been at home in Continental conservatories since the 1930s, and has developed both a systematic approach to pedagogy and a large repertory of art music written by well-known composers for well-trained professional musicians. On the revival – small-scale, to be sure – of newly composed ‘classical’ music for the concertina beginning in the mid-1980s, see Atlas, ‘The “Respectable” Concertina’, Music & Letters, 80 (1999): 241–53, to which a number of new pieces can already be added; see my ‘Concertinas 1998–1999: A (Brief) Review-Essay’, The Free-Reed Journal, 2 (2000): 42–53.
49 Wayne, ‘The Wheatstone English Concertina’, 140. We know how many buttons most instruments from this period had because the number was generally recorded in the sales ledgers (HMWA, C1046 and C104a).
50 A notice about the concert, signed ‘F.W.M.’, in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, xxvi/20 (8 March 1847): 80–81, describes Regondi’s instrument as having a range of g–g''''; the notice is printed in Jacobs, Der junge Gitarren- und Concertinavirtuose Giulio Regondi, 245.
51 See Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, 1851, 469–70; Mactaggart and Mactaggart, Musical Instruments in the 1851 Exhibition, 60.
52 See the production book catalogued as C1054 (pp. 158–9) in HMWA, which records the production of instruments for April–June and October–December 1871.
53 The title page includes the following notice: ‘N.B. Orchestral accompaniments (M. S.) [manuscript] to the above solo (as performed by Mr. Henry Roe at the “World’s Peace Jubilee,” Boston, America; also at the Court–Gaiety–Globe Theatres, London; and Provincial Concerts &c) can be had by application to 20, Conduit Street, Regent Street, London, W.’ (that is, Wheatstone’s address); the Jubilee to which the notice refers was held in 1872; Henry Roe, George Roe’s brother, was accompanied by the Grenadier Guards under the direction of Daniel Godfrey; on Godfrey, see E.D. Mackerness, ‘Godfrey’ §2, in GMOL; on the Boston Peace Jubilee, see Burkat, Leonard, ‘Boston’, The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, ed. Hitchcock, H. Wiley and Sadie, Stanley (London: Macmillan, 1986), 1: 265; on Henry Roe, see Ward, ‘The English Concertina’, 511Google Scholar.
54 He performed the Bériot concerto (with piano accompaniment) at, among other occasions, a concert in Ireland in 1842 and at his Dresden recital of 26 October 1846; see Lawrence, ‘Giulio Regondi and the Concertina in Ireland’, 23; Jacobs, Die junge Gitarrenund Concertinavirtuose Giulio Regondi, 243–4. Regondi published his adaptation for concertina as Ier Concerto, Op. 16, transcript pour la Concertina par Giulio Regondi et composé par C. de Bériot (Wheatstone, 1868); for music examples that compare passages from Bériot’s original and Regondi’s adaptation, see Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, 70–71. Perhaps this is the same Bériot concerto that Blagrove performed at his Windsor Castle recital of 23 November 1868, a programme that also included the Adagio and Rondo of a Dussek Sonata in Bfor violin and piano; the programme is reproduced in Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, Pl. 11. Other pieces from the violin repertory that became part of the professional concertinists’ repertory include the Beethoven Violin Sonata in C minor, op. 30, and Joseph Mayseder’s Violin Sonata in A, op. 47; see Atlas, ‘Signor Alsepti and “Regondi’s Golden Exercise”’, Concertina World: Newsletter of the International Concertina Association, supplement to No. 426 (2003) (also online at www.concertina.com/atlas); Jacobs, Der junge Gitarren- und Concertinavirtuose Giulio Regondi, 152). Finally, Regondi incorporated two movements from the Bach unaccompanied sonatas and partitas – the Double (I) from the Partita No. 1 in B minor, BWV 1002, and the Fuga from the Sonata No. 3 in C., BWV 1005 – in his first tutor, Rudimenti del concertinista: A Complete Series of Elementary & Progressive Exercises for the Concertina (Joseph Scates, 1844): 36, 40–45. I know of at least two pieces that were written to be played on either instrument: James Harcourt’s Sonata for Violin (or Concertina) and Piano Forte, op. 2 (Addison, Hollier & Lucas, 1861), and Floyd Scholl’s Two Reveries for the Concertina or Violin with an accompaniment for the Piano-Forte (Wheatstone, 1874); on Harcourt (1818–1883), who was organist of St Peter’s Mancroft, Norwich, see Brown and Stratton, British Musical Biography, 182; that Harcourt himself played the concertina may be evidenced by the entries for ‘Harcourt’ on 27 June 1860 and 21 May 1863 (though both are without first name or even indication of gender) in the Wheatstone sales ledger C1052, pp. 25, 85 (in HMWA). Indeed, it was the ability of the concertina to appropriate some of the violin repertory (at least that portion of it that was not overly ‘violinistic’) – as well as that of the flute and oboe – that was one of the instrument’s most consistently used selling points, both in the publicity material issued by manufacturers and in the many method books for the instrument. Thus Blagrove writes, in his Instruction Book for the Study of the Concertina (Cramer, Wood, 1864), 1, that the concertina ‘is capable of producing many beautiful tones, harmonies and effects that are peculiar to it, besides possessing the quality of performing all music that has been composed for the Flute and Oboe and with the exception of a few of the upper notes all Violin music’. The 1910s Wheatstone Price List takes the sales pitch one step further: ‘so simple is the arrangement of the keyboard, and so easy the fingering, that with but slight knowledge of music a beginner, who can devote no more than, say, half-an-hour a day, may become able to perform fairly well on the Æola in the course of a few weeks – an achievement utterly impossible with the violin, flute, etc.’; on the concertina manufacturers’ use of this selling point to pitch the instrument to women in particular, see Atlas, ‘Ladies in the Wheatstone Ledgers’.
55 The added buttons brought with them an increase in price; thus the 1910s Wheatstone Price List advertises the 48-button Æola at £18.0.0, while the 56-button model costs £22.0.0. We might note that Wheatstone’s also lists a 60-button model that reaches up to a'''' (£24.0.0), as well as an instrument with 64 buttons that extends up to c'''''(£26.0.0). By the 1880s, Lachenal & Co. also turned out models with more than 60 buttons; see Chambers, ‘Some Notes on Lachenal Concertina Production’, 11.
56 I discuss matters of fingering at some length throughout Contemplating the Concertina.
57 See Mark Lindley and Glyn Jenkins, ‘Fingering: §I/1–2. Keyboard Fingering’, in GMOL.
58 They were able to do so because they generally played standing, supporting the weight of the instrument by letting it dangle from a strap, much like a saxophone player holds that instrument today; see Atlas, Contemplating the Concertina, 5–10.
59 These pale in comparison to the many five- and six-note chords called for in such pieces as Regondi’s Remembrance (Wheatstone, 1872) or Case’s Serenade, op. 8 (Wheatstone, 1859), for unaccompanied baritone and treble, respectively, not to mention the chords of up to ten notes in Regondi’s Rudimenti del concertinista. The Regondi and Case compositions have recently been reprinted by Concertina Connection (see note 1); examples from both works and the Regondi instruction manual appear in Atlas, Contemplating the Concertina, 52–3; there is a recording of Remembrance on the CD titled The Great Regondi, vol. ii (cited in note 18).
60 Obviously, the period instruments that one might own are governed to some extent by the marketplace. One of the sad things in today’s concertina culture is the tendency for collectors to purchase such instruments and then simply display them on a shelf (often driving up prices in the process). Another is the tendency to modernize period instruments in order to make them more suitable for repertories of ‘traditional’ or other music for which they were never intended. Thus one has to admire the policy of Wim Wakker’s Concertina Connection not to ‘modernize’ any concertina manufactured prior to about 1850.
61 The Confession, which begins with the words ‘Oh! Shrive me, father – haste, haste, and shrive me’ (first published in Edward Fitzsimons, Irish Minstrelsy [Dublin: Goulding, 1814]), seems to be the earliest known text to be associated with the well-known tune Londonderry Air, even better known as Danny Boy since Fred Weatherly published it with those words in 1913; see Audley, Brian, ‘The Provenance of the Londonderry Air’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 125 (2000): 235–42;Google Scholar Julia and I perform the piece in an arrangement by Mr Benjamin Bierman for voice and treble concertina; the arrangement is published as a music supplement to Papers of the International Concertina Association, 2 (2005).
62 However, when we (the New York Victorian Consort) performed Devorgilla and Eternity at the 71st Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, 28 October 2005, I used the instrument with four-fold bellows and Young’s No. 1 for both pieces; we compensated for the four-fold bellows in Devorgilla by picking up the tempo ever so slightly, while Young No. 1 elicited no post-performance complaints that we were out of tune in Eternity.