George Brock-Nannestad
The mechanization of performance studies
W hile digital technology has recently popu-
larized and simplified the use of objective
approaches to musicological and performance prac-
tice research, there was fundamental research in
these areas using technology even before 1900. It
is my belief that without an understanding of these
early, analogue, approaches, modern descriptions
may be devoid of context. Looking at the basics will
prepare readers for the modern digital implementa-
tions of such methods. The greater part of the chain
of measurements and analyses has nothing to do
with the concept of ‘digital’. The phenomena are the
same, and measurements become more refined with
more modern technology; it is really the data treat-
ment and presentation that benefit from the digital
revolution.
Early methodologies used both specially built
apparatus and existing devices that had been
intended for a different use; for instance, the player
piano, which was used as early as 1906 to study
details of piano performance. There is a surprisingly
large amount of early material (i.e. from the early
20th century) to access, which today is rarely given
more than token acknowledgement. The purpose of
this article is to provide a historical overview and to
put it into context, but also to evaluate the validity of
the early research material. It is interesting that the
two foremost early researchers applying the gramo-
phone to the study of performance were both psy-
chologists: E. W. Scripture and C. E. Seashore.
The early objective approaches may also be traced
through the profuse publication activity of the early
researchers. This was to a large degree due to spe-
cially funded research programmes in the early dec-
ades of the 20th century, a time when technology
in general constituted the equivalent quantum leap
that digital technology does today.
Early Music, Vol. xlii, No. 4 © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1093/em/cau124, available online at www.em.oxfordjournals.org
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The fundamentals
Those who strived to understand how music was
made in the late 19th century built on the knowl-
edge of Ernst Chladni,1 Friedrich Zamminer2
and Hermann von Helmholtz,3 and relied on scien-
tific instrument-makers, such as Rudolph Koenig,4
and a widening circle of acousticians, such as
Franz Joseph Pisko,5 Alexander Ellis6 and John
G. McKendrick.7
The prerequisite to understanding music, or even
sound, in a technical sense, is to realize that it is not
a state, but a development over time. This means
that in order to map the occurrence of any particu-
lar phenomenon, it is necessary to move the point
of registration with respect to a time-axis. In objec-
tive research it has always been considered that time
moves continuously and at a fixed rate, so the two-
dimensional relative movement between the point
of registration and the time creates a trace that is
‘wiggly’.
The initial fundamental tool for recording phe-
nomena on a time-axis was a kymograph (literally
‘smoke-writing’). This consisted of a cylinder that
was blackened by soot from a flame, and which was
rotated at a constant speed (illus.1). In the early ver-
sion, the shaft for the cylinder was a threaded rod,
and rotation of the cylinder simultaneously moved
it sideways as the thread worked its way through a
fixed nut. A  stylus scraped against the black sur-
face and removed it as the cylinder moved, and
the resulting trace was a helix—in negative, so to
speak. The phenomenon to be recorded was con-
verted into movement at right angles to the helix,
so that the resulting trace was given undulations. It
was also realized that it would be possible to record
several phenomena in parallel, with the essential
feature that all were happening simultaneously
623

1  The kymograph, fig.237 from É.-J. Marey, La méthode
graphique dans les sciences expérimentales et principale-
ment en physiologie et en médecine (Paris, 2/1885)
and related to one and the same time-axis. The first
systematic user of the kymograph was Édouard-
Léon Scott,8 and he devised a method by which
a separate trace from a powered tuning fork was
also recorded. His argument was that this would
provide an absolute time-reference, in particular
for those cases where using clockwork to ensure a
constant speed would be too expensive, since the
cylinder was turned by hand. We now call this kind
of trace a ‘timing track’.
The trace was fixed to the surface of the cylinder
and had to be analysed in situ. Early on, a method
was developed so that a long sheet of paper was
wrapped around the cylinder with an overlap, and
the sheet subsequently blackened. For storage and
analysis the sheet was removed and varnished; it was
then possible to revisit the trace and to perform var-
ious kinds of analysis involving measurements, both
on the time-axis and on the undulations.
Scott’s phonautograph9 was the first apparatus on the
kymograph principle that recorded airborne sound,
but sadly it was deficient because the microphonic
part was constructed on a philosophy of mimick-
ing the function of the ear. This meant that traces
of, for example, speech were not of a type amenable
624  Early Music  November 2014
to strict mathematical analysis. However, Scott was
quite satisfied with its ability to record prosody,10
and Scott’s instrument-maker Rudolph Koenig
developed the stroboscopic principle for manomet-
ric flames,11 which, however, did not leave a perma-
nent record unless they were photographed.
The philosophical question was now, ‘which
phenomena do we wish to show in dependence
of time’? These had to be phenomena that were
observable in connection with performance of
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music, that had to do with the timing of, for exam-
ple, finger movements on a keyboard instrument;
tempo and rhythm and their intended and non-
intended variations; vibrato in instrumental and
vocal performances; or bowing of stringed instru-
ments. Étienne-Jules Marey used the kymograph
principle in his studies of organic movement,12
attaching movement sensors to many parts of the
animal and human body and recording movement
from these sources simultaneously. Speech was
studied by recording movement of jaw, larynx, lips
and tongue, as well as measuring the velocity of
the emitted air. And, obviously, the result of per-
formances, the musical sound, could be recorded
on cylinder or gramophone record. After 1877, the
early phonograph by Edison was used to obtain
tracings of sound on tin-foil. The tracings were then
subjected to manual Fourier analysis by measuring
amplitudes at sampled places of the waveform. As
soon as the cylinder principle became based on
cutting wax rather than on indenting tin-foil it
became easy for researchers to use and dominated
one-off scientific recording well into the 1930s.
A typical analysis of a period of a waveform, for
example a breakdown of its component harmonics,
could take up to four hours of calculation. Later, a
Henrici analyser was used,13 which provided a direct
readout of the coefficients for the individual har-
monics. Scripture stated in 1901:
The Fourier analysis so frequently used by Hermann,
Pipping, and others, for finding the components of a
vowel curve has been employed at great disadvantage on
account of the time it required. Even with the schemes and
tables of Prof. Hermann the measurement and analysis of
a single wave required two or three hours of constant labor
by a skilled person. The harmonic analyzer constructed by
Coradi (Zürich) from designs of Prof. Henrici (London)
performs the analysis automatically when its indicating
point is moved once forward and then backward along the
wave. The high degree of precision required for such an
instrument makes the cost from $250 upward for one giv-
ing six to ten partials.14
Who used the early equipment?
The earliest use involved the human voice, more
specifically, determining the difference between
vowels and consonants, leading directly to the pho-
netic sciences. Phonetics might be said to be noth-
ing other than the performance practice of spoken
language.15 The earliest users were thus phoneti-
cians, but the equipment was quickly taken up by
experimental psychologists. There were many work-
ing in the field, but three researchers stand out:
Edward Wheeler Scripture (1864–1945), Dayton
Clarence Miller (1866–1941) and Carl Emil Seashore
(1866–1949). They all had ample funding and under-
took research programmes between 1895 and 1940,
making important contributions over more than
40 years; Scripture and Seashore were experimental
psychologists, and Miller was a physicist who began
to concentrate on musical acoustics in around 1905.
Lesser-known figures included Otto Ortmann16
and Louis Cheslock17 at The Peabody Conservatory
in Baltimore, and Percival Hodgson in the UK
researching bowing movements by photographic
means.18 That they are less well known today does
not mean that their research was less valuable.
Edward Wheeler Scripture
Scripture was a psychologist of Wundt’s school and was
head of the Yale University Psychological Laboratory
(1892–1903) when he undertook research into
speech and singing.19 In the first years after it was
founded the laboratory had worked with the funda-
mental actions of humans,20 paralleling some of the
work by Marey and Georges Demenij in France and
using, for instance, their manometric capsule or tam-
bour enregistreur.
In 1896, Scripture used a stroboscopic apparatus to
observe sounds of reasonably constant pitch (vibra-
tions with a repeating cycle).21 This was a type of appa-
ratus that had been invented independently several
times:22 by Koenig as his manometric flames (1872); by
Johannes Georg Forchhammer (phonoscope, 1885)23
for enabling deaf children to observe when they were
making a proper vowel; by Seashore (Tonoscope in
1902, improved in 1916, although he expressed his
indebtedness to Scripture) for making pitch observ-
able; and again by Scripture (the Strobilion, 1928) for
assisting speech-impaired subjects. And, still remem-
bered by some of today’s musicians and instrument-
makers, the Stroboconn24 was the commercially
available instrument from the mid-1930s.
After receiving a grant from the Carnegie
Foundation, Scripture concentrated on analysing
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his huge collection of data on vocal performance.25
As late as 1928 he reported26 on a tracing and sub-
sequent analysis of Enrico Caruso’s voice in which
he found peculiarities (since he mentions that the
results were discussed with Caruso, that analysis
must have been made before 1921, when Caruso
died). The selection, ‘Di quella pira’ (Manrico’s
cabaletta in Verdi’s Il trovatore, Act 3 scene 2), was
last recorded by Caruso in 1906. Caruso was not at
all happy with being presented with the facts, and
Scripture reports:
He was outraged. The attempt to explain his peculiarities
as signs of the highest art was in vain. He thought that it
was wished to find his singing at fault. He was completely
unconscious of specifically these peculiarities. The uncon-
scious and effortless use of the finest expression of art was
precisely the hallmark of his singing.
Not all performance practice studies give satisfac-
tion to the performer!
It appears that despite the frequently detailed
references to Fourier analysis and Scripture’s use
of, for example, stroboscopic instruments, his
main interest remained the observation of the
waveform of sounds. In this, he reminds us of
the approach to ‘glyphs’ used by Édouard-Léon
Scott in 1857 and most probably also Thomas Alva
Edison in 1877.27 However, this is a human pat-
tern-recognition technique that is very difficult to
learn, and Scripture eventually resigned himself
to this fact.28
Dayton Clarence Miller
Miller was a professor of physics at the Case School
of Applied Science in Cleveland, Ohio between
1893 and 1936. He wrote a comprehensive book on
laboratory practice in 1903,29 and his laboratory
Early Music  November 2014  625
was one of the few in the United States to have a not deviate from this approach in his later researches
large complement of Rudolph Koenig’s apparatus into singing and other performance. Today we would
for acoustics. Miller’s first contribution to musical most likely add nerve potentials and electroencepha-
acoustics was the development (1908–12), fine tun- litic signals to his measurable parameters.
ing and calibration of a piece of equipment called
a phonodeik, needed to perform accurate meas-
urements using photographic recording of sound
pressure. In this field he was the undisputed mas-
ter. His acoustic equipment was so accurate that not
only did he certify tuning forks,30 he also became a

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consultant to large corporations in the early devel-
opment of gramophones and loudspeakers. Miller
published a series of lectures in 1916 that became
a standard work in the field for many years.31 He
cooperated with Frances Densmore in her analyses
of American Indian song,32 was an amateur flautist
and flute collector, and translated Theobald Boehm’s
1871 pamphlet Die Flöte und das Flötenspiel into
English.33 Miller’s collection of flutes and extensive
documentary material was donated to the Library of
Congress.34

Carl Emil Seashore

Seashore obtained his doctorate at Yale University
under Scripture, working on the perception of illu-
sions. He began his long tenure at the University of
Iowa in 1897 and in 1899 made his first contribution
to the study of musical performance in the form of an
audiometer, which was followed by a long sequence of
equipment devised for the collection of information
on various performance parameters. He also created
what in the USA became the standard way of evaluat-
ing musicality in children for decades—The Seashore
Measures for Musical Talent—which comprised a
number of carefully recorded discs representing inter-
vals, rhythms etc., and in which the ability to distin-
guish between musically relevant elements became the
indicator of talent. His first large study was reported
in 1920.35 Similar approaches were used by other psy-
chologists (for example, Jacob Kwalwasser), but they
did not agree with Seashore in all details.36
Seashore gradually developed a view of what consti-
tutes ‘good performance’, which may be summarized
as being ‘controlled deviation from the strait-jacket
of the score’. He expressed his view on performance
and the parameters responsible in a paper in the 2  Table from C. E. Seashore, ‘The measure of a singer’,
journal Science in 1912 (illus.2).37 Essentially he did Science, New Series, xxxv/893 (1912), pp.201–12

626  Early Music  November 2014

 In 1931, Seashore collected a team of researchers
who worked systematically with the parameters that
he felt constituted performance of music. Amongst
others, he was able to attract Milton Metfessel,
who had worked with African American music on
record and used the technique of phonophotogra-
phy.38 Seashore’s team worked with live performers
as well as with commercial recordings, and were able
to correlate performances that were judged as being
‘good’ with the combination of parameters that had
gone into the performance. An important series of
volumes of the University of Iowa Studies in the
Psychology of Music was also produced.39
In a world, or at least a culture, of fixed-pitch
instruments, variable-pitch instruments—includ-
ing the voice—stand apart, their significant feature
being the possibility for vibrato, which was applied
artistically. Two full volumes of the Studies in the
Psychology of Music series were dedicated to this
aspect. Seashore himself condensed the team’s find-
ings in his book Psychology of music (1938), and later
in a further book, In search of beauty in music: A sci-
entific approach to musical esthetics,40 which was at
times scorned, mainly because it was perceived as
old-fashioned. There is no doubt that Seashore’s out-
look was based on the aesthetics of the 1930s, which
still had remnants of ‘Romantic’ music-making.
A brief example: piano performance
Quite early on, it was realized that the fact that
the recording of a piano roll was a recording of
each key’s movement as it was played would mean
that it could be useful in the determination of
how a performance was created by the pianist.
The piano rolls sold as ‘Artist’s Roll’ were based
on recordings by the pianist on a specially pre-
pared piano, and although the competing systems
differed (for example, Hupfeld, Welte, Ampico,
Aeolian and other, minor, companies), there was
invariably a manual transfer from the recorded
traces to a long roll of paper bearing a series of
parallel holes, the start of which represented the
time of attack and the length the duration each
key was pressed. Ingenious mechanisms allowed
the series of holes to control each key individu-
ally in a reproducing piano, and if the correct
tempo were selected, the recorded piece was per-
formed for the listener more or less as the pianist
had originally performed it. The first historical
‘editing’ of recorded performance was facilitated
during the manufacture of the piano roll. Early
researchers simply placed a ruler on the per-
forated paper strip in order to determine how
chords were played, i.e. which finger came first,
as well as its duration (provided the correct speed
for the roll was known), rubato and—to a lesser
degree—dynamics.41
When Seashore’s project was developed, inten-
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sive use was made of the piano camera developed by
Joseph Tiffin,42 which used minute mirrors to deflect
light beams from each hammer (in an otherwise
normal grand piano) onto photographic film. This
way, it became possible to obtain parallel tracings
of the activation of the hammers in performance.
The velocity of the hammer was also determined for
each note played, indicating the dynamics.43
Later developments in analogue techniques
Research during World War II into the efficient cod-
ing of spoken messages so that they could be trans-
mitted with little more than telegraph signals had
the side benefit that equipment was developed for
displaying the spectrum of sounds as they varied
during utterance.44 Phoneticians eagerly embraced
this free-standing instrument, which became com-
mercially available from the late 1940s as the Kay
(Elemetrics) Sonagraph (a similar piece of equip-
ment, the VoiceWriter, was dependent on the use of
magnetic tape). It was an expensive apparatus, which
during its first decade existed in a single example in
each small European nation, and was mainly used
in forensics for voice identification. The pre-printed
Sonagraph recording paper became iconic world-
wide, and its inclusion in academic papers proved
that the research had been performed to the highest
standards. Gradually, its use in bird- and dolphin-
song research became more common, and Emile
Leipp and Michelle Castellengo in France45 and
Helmut Rösing in Austria46 obtained access to this
equipment for musical performance practice studies.
Do analogue and digital results compare?
All of the approaches discussed above resulted in
an immense amount of data that was painstakingly
analysed and sorted. The results of the data digestion
Early Music  November 2014  627
were published as graphs that can be reanalysed today,
in particular where the sound recordings that formed
their basis can be identified. And indeed they were:
for instance, Seashore’s group indicated the exact
radius on a commercial record in order to indicate
precisely which sound was analysed.47 Sadly, the raw
data on which the graphs were based has been dis-
carded.48 Modern data collection is digital, and here
there is a different danger: of media and reproducer
obsolescence. There is too often insufficient funding
Conclusions
The massive collection of data was made possible
by machinery, and because this was mechanical
and optical/photographical it was very expensive
to manufacture; thus only programmes with spe-
cial funding could make the required large invest-
ments, and in turn this meant that research that
relied more on measurements than on observation
could only be performed where the proper equip-
ment was available. As the equipment became use-

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to migrate data from one system to another. Hence,
there may well be a further loss of raw data over time.
Researchers into performance practice that
bridged the switch from analogue to digital (such
as the Stockholm Music Acoustics Group)49 con-
sidered musical acoustics to be an aspect of musi-
cal performance, and they obtained results that
related to individual instruments and choirs, and
examined evidence-based performance rules. There
is no doubt that the huge modern output of results
deals with phenomena that were also dealt with by
the pioneers, and that comparisons can be made,
at least when it involves questions of intensity and
timing.50 Modern technology has created a degree of
refinement that will be difficult to surpass, and this
can also be applied to early performance recordings,
such as the analyses of pianist Vladimir de Pachmann
(1848–1933) performing Chopin.51 The field of pho-
netics has always regarded the development in tech-
nological aids to research as a continuum.52
ful outside the fields of the humanities, such as in
forensics, it was produced in greater volume and,
relatively, its price dropped and it came within the
reach of (at least) phoneticians. This happened
at the time of the huge post-World War II devel-
opment in analogue electronic technology that
formed the basis for the later integrated-circuit
digital technology, in which much of the dedicated
processing was enabled via relatively less expen-
sive programming (software) and not via hard-
ware. This is where we stand today. But one does
feel tempted to conclude by remembering Percy
Grainger’s quote from early music pioneer Arnold
Dolmetsch in 1933:
No art can develop healthily unless grounded upon a
real, direct comprehension of the achievement of past
generations.53

George Brock-Nannestad graduated in electronics and signal processing in 1971, focusing on musical
acoustics. In 1981–6 he carried out the project ‘The establishment of objective criteria for correct repro-
duction of historical sound recordings’, funded by the Danish Research Council for the Humanities.
Since 1997 he has been a consultant on, and researched, sound restoration concepts and the history
of AV technology. He contributed regularly to the CHARM project (AHRC Research Centre for the
History and Analysis of Recorded Music, 2004–9) and has contributed chapters on the historical
development of recording technology in The Cambridge Companion to recorded music (2009) and
The art of record production (2012). gbn@newmail.dk

I am grateful to the late Arthur H. Benade
(1925–87) and his wife Virginia Benade
Belveal for having over the years facilitated
my access to material relating to Dayton
C. Miller at Case Western Reserve
University. I am also grateful to the
anonymous reviewers for incisive comments.
1  Ernst Chladni, Beiträge zur
praktischen Akustik und zur Lehre vom
Instrumentbau (Leipzig, 1821).
2  Friedrich Zamminer, Die Musik und
die musikalischen Instrumente in ihrer
Beziehung zu den Gesetzen der Akustik
(Giessen, 1855).
3  Hermann von Helmholtz, Die Lehre
von den Tonempfindungen als physi-
ologische Grundlage für die Theorie der
Musik (Braunschweig, 1863).
4  Rudolph Koenig, Quelques expériences
d’acoustique (Paris, 1882); a contempo-
rary evaluation may be found in Silvanus

628  Early Music  November 2014

P. Thompson, The physical foundation of
music; being an exposition of the acousti-
cal researches of Dr. Rudolph Koenig,
of Paris, Royal Institution of Great
Britain, Meeting Friday, June 13, 1890.
A modern assessment may be found
in D. Pantalony, Altered sensations:
Rudolph Koenig’s acoustical workshop
in nineteenth-century Paris (Dordrecht,
2009).
5  Franz Joseph Pisko, Die neueren
Apparate der Akustik. Für Freunde der
Naturwissenschaft und der Tonkunst
(Vienna, 1865).
6  Alexander Ellis FRS is today
best known for his translation of
the second edition of Helmholtz’s
Tonempfindungen and for researches
in tuning, pitch and other musical
practices.
7  John Gray McKendrick was a
Scottish physiologist and acoustician
who carried out many experiments
with the emergent phonograph and
graphical representations of sound.
8  Édouard-Léon Scott, ‘Application
for patent of addition to Patent No.
31470’, dated 29 July 1859. Translation
in G. Brock-Nannestad, 150 years of
time-base in acoustic measurement
and 100 years of audio’s best publicity
stunt—2007 as a commemorative year,
AES Convention Paper no.7007, 122nd
Convention (Vienna, 5–8 May 2007),
pp.8–12.
9  Édouard-Léon Scott, ‘Application
for Patent No. 31470’, dated 25 March
1857. Translation in Brock-Nannestad,
150 years of time-base, pp.7–8.
10  G. Brock-Nannestad, ‘Prosody in
French theatrical declamation traced
backwards in time’, in Proceedings
of Acoustics Paris ‘08 (Paris, 2008),
pp.2399–404.
11  Rudolph Koenig, ‘Die manometrischen
Flammen’, Annalen der Physik und
Chemie, cxxxxvi (1872), pp.161–99.
12  Étienne-Jules Marey, La méthode
graphique dans les sciences expérimen-
tales et principalement en
physiologie et en médecine (Paris,
2/1885).
13  D. C. Miller, ‘The Henrici harmonic
analyzer and devices for extending
and facilitating its use’, Journal of the
Franklin Institute (1916), pp.285–322.
The Case School of Applied Science
had invested heavily in precision
instruments.
14  E. W. Scripture, ‘Current notes
in phonetics’, Modern Language
Notes, xvi (1901), pp.209–11, at p.211.
Ludwig Hermann had created overlay
templates to expose only those coef-
ficients in the expressions that were
to be calculated in each step, thereby
preventing a number of errors in this
manual process.
15  G. Brock-Nannestad, ‘An evalua-
tion of early use of sound recordings
in the analysis of performance practice
and in phonetics’, in Internationaler
Musikwissenschaftlicher Kongress zum
Mozartjahr 1991 Baden-Wien. Bericht,
ed. I. Fuchs, ii (Tutzing, 1993), pp.505–14.
16  O. Ortmann, The physiological
mechanics of piano technique. An
experimental study of the nature of
muscular action as used in piano
playing, and of the effects thereof upon
the piano key and the piano tone (New
York and London, 1929).
17  L. Cheslock, ‘Introductory study
on violin vibrato’, in Peabody Institute
Research Studies in Music, ed.
O. Ortmann (Baltimore, 1931).
18  P. Hodgson, ‘Motion study and violin
bowing’, The Strad (1934), pp.58–63,
including 45 images. Both Ortmann and
Hodgson used a small electrical lightbulb
on the moving element it was to trace.
19  E. W. Scripture, The elements of
experimental phonetics (New York,
1904). This very complete report also
demonstrates Scripture’s knowledge
of earlier phonetic research abroad,
such as that by McKendrick, Rousselot,
Pipping and Hermann. As in ‘modern’
publishing of scientific results, some of
the content was previously published in
Yale annual reports. The book contains
a valuable historical bibliography on
pp.37–8.
20  E. W. Scripture, Thinking, feeling,
doing (Meadville, PA, 1895).
21  [E. W. Scripture], Studies from
the Yale Psychological Laboratory, iv
(1896), (Exercise xvi), pp.135–6.
Early Music  November 2014  629
22  G. Panconcelli-Calzia, ‘Zur
Geschichte der phonoskopischen
Vorrichtungen’, Annalen der Physik,
ccccii (1931), pp.673–80.
23  Johannes Georg Forchhammer, Das
Phonoskop (Copenhagen, 1887).
24  Made by C. G. Conn Ltd., Elkhart,
Indiana, who were at the time brass
instrument-makers.
25  E. W. Scripture, Researches in
experimental phonetics: the study of
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speech curves (Washington DC, 1906).
This book contains both the method
of analysis, the calculations and the
results. In order to perform this huge
task a large number of ‘computers’
were used, that is, human personnel
using tables and performing manual
calculations.
26  E. W. Scripture, ‘Eine
Grammophonkurve der Stimme des
Tenors Enrico Caruso’, Zeitschrift für
Sinnesphysiologie, lix (1928), pp.170–3,
at p.173, author’s translation.
27  P. Feaster, ‘Speech acoustics and
the keyboard telephone: rethinking
Edison’s discovery of the phonograph
principle’, ARSC Journal, xxxviii
(2007), pp.10–43.
28  E. W. Scripture: ‘Analysis and inter-
pretation of vowel tracks’, Journal of the
Acoustical Society of America, v (1933),
pp.148–52.
29  D. C. Miller, Laboratory physics, a
student’s manual for colleges and scien-
tific schools (Boston, 1903).
30  [D. C. Miller], ‘Calibration of mis-
cellaneous forks November 1916’, Case
Western Reserve University Archives
no.19IM2/6/9. Tuning forks made by
Koenig were compared to forks from
the American Piano Manufacturers’
Association and the Boston Symphony
Orchestra ‘A’.
31  D. C. Miller, The science of musical
sounds (New York, 1916).
32  F. Densmore, ‘Northern Ute music’,
Smithsonian Institution Bureau of
American Ethnology Bulletin 75
(Washington DC, 1922). Miller wrote
the Appendix, pp.206–10, with several
plates of sound curves and analyses
in 1918.
33  T. Boehm, The flute and flute-play-
ing in acoustical, technical and artistic
aspects, ed. D. C. Miller (Cleveland,
OH, 1908); 2nd English edn, revised
and enlarged (London, 1922). The
introductory note in the Dover Books
reprint of the 2nd edition is completely
silent on Miller’s contribution.
34  L. E. Gilliam and W. Lichtenwanger,
The Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection.
A checklist of the instruments
(Washington DC, 1961). D. C. Miller,
The Dayton C. Miller Collections
relating to the Flute, ii: Catalogue of
books and literary material relating to
the flute and other musical instru-
ments with annotations (Cleveland,
OH, 1935). It is interesting that the
material in this publication refers to
includes a graph of Miller’s acquisition
of flutes, showing that it was consider-
ably intensified during the period of his
consultancies.
35  C. E. Seashore, ‘A survey of musical
talent in the public schools’, University of
Iowa Studies in Child Welfare, i/2 (1920).
36  See, for example, J. Kwalwasser,
Tests and measurements in music
(Boston and New York, 1927).
37  C. E. Seashore, ‘The measure of a
singer’, Science, New Series, xxxv/893
(1912), pp.201–12, at pp.202–3.
38  Phonophotography was a technical
method of recording sound on moving
film. M. Metfessel, Phonophotography
in folk music: American negro songs in
new notation (Chapel Hill, NC, 1928);
the introduction by Seashore on pp.2–
18 summarizes very well his by-now
crystallized view on performance and
interpretation. Joseph Tiffin describes
the phonophotograph apparatus in
detail in J. Tiffin, ‘Phonophotograph
apparatus’, in ‘The vibrato’, University of
Iowa Studies in the Psychology of Music,
ed. C. E. Seashore, i (1933), pp.118–33.
39  ‘The vibrato’, ed. Seashore;
‘Psychology of the vibrato in voice and
instrument’, University of Iowa Studies
in the Psychology of Music, ed. C. E.
Seashore, iii (1936); ‘Objective
analysis of musical performance’,
University of Iowa Studies in the
630  Early Music  November 2014
Psychology of Music, ed. C. E. Seashore,
iv (1936).
40  C. E. Seashore, In search of
beauty in music: a scientific approach
to musical esthetics (New York, 1947).
41  L. Riemann, ‘Die musikalische
Bedeutung der Klavierspielapparate’,
Der Kunstwart, xix (1906), pp.553–60.
42  J. Tiffin, ‘An apparatus for photo-
graphically recording piano playing’,
Journal of General Psychology, v (1931),
pp.120–4.
43  M. T. Henderson, J. Tiffin and C. E.
Seashore, ‘The Iowa piano camera and
its use’, in University of Iowa Studies in
the Psychology of Music, vi (1936), ed.
C. E. Seashore, pp.252–62.
44  R. K. Potter, G. A. Kopp and H. C.
Green, Visible speech (New York, 1947).
45  M. Castellengo, ‘Instruments de
musique traditionnels. Instruments
de musique électroniques’, in Festival
international du son haute fidélité
stéréophonie, Conférences des journees
d’études (Paris, 1967), pp.7–17.
46  H. Rösing, ‘Probleme und neue
Wege der Analyse von Instrumenten-
und Orchesterklängen’ (diss., University
of Vienna, 1967); published in the series
Dissertationen der Universität Wien as
vol.xlii (1970).
47  For instance, in Tiffin, ‘‘Phono­
photograph apparatus’, n.38: ‘The tone
is located on Victor Record No. 6787-b,
prologue from “Pagliacci”. The tone is in
the groove which is 78 mm. toward the
center of the record, measured on a radius
from the outer groove’ (p.118, n.3).
48  The archives of the University of
Iowa seem to hold no raw data from
Seashore’s Laboratory (Papers of Carl
E. Seashore, rg 99.0164: Finding Aid).
The experimental acoustic horns used by
G. W. Stewart in the Physics Department
of the same university in his fundamen-
tal research of 1916–20 into the perfor-
mance of conical horns were found in
the 1970s in the chemistry department
as ‘funnels’ (William R. Savage, personal
communication 1983).
49  The group headed by Professor
Johan Sundberg originally grew out
of the phonetics research performed
under Professor Gunnar Fant at the
Royal Institute of Technology in
Stockholm; see G. Fant, Speech acous-
tics and phonetics (Boston, Dordrecht
and London, 2004).
50  The reproduction of early, in
particular acoustic (pre-1925), records
today may be of a much higher qual-
ity than in the 1930s, and so both
the signal-to-noise ratio and the
compensation for the linear distor-
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tion due to the recording horn may
be much improved. A. Askenfelt and
E. V. Jansson, ‘From touch to string
vibrations. I: Timing in the grand
piano action’, Journal of the Acoustical
Society of America, lxxxiii (1990),
pp.52–63; R. Timmers and H. Honing,
‘On music performance, theories,
measurement and diversity’, Cognitive
Processing (International Quarterly of
Cognitive Sciences), i–ii (2002), pp.1–
19; W. Goebl and C. Palmer, ‘Finger
motion in piano performance: touch
and tempo’, International Symposium
on Performance Science (2009),
pp.65–70; and A. Dodson, ‘Expressive
timing in expanded phrases: an
empirical study of recordings of three
Chopin preludes’, Music Performance
Research, iv (2011), pp.2–29, are only
a few examples of recent reports that
have potential as not-yet explored
historical perspectives with respect to
the pioneering work outlined in the
present article.
51  N. Nettheim, ‘The reconstitution of
historical piano recordings: Vladimir
de Pachmann plays Chopin’s Nocturne
in E Minor’, Music Performance
Research, vi (2013), pp.97–125.
52  In this respect it seems to follow the
pattern in the historical development
and implementation of technologies
recently developed in D. Edgerton,
The shock of the old: technology and
global history since 1900 (London,
2006), pp.8 and 29. I am indebted to an
anonymous reviewer for suggesting this
relationship.
53  P. Grainger, ‘Arnold Dolmetsch:
musical confucius’, The Musical
Quarterly, xix (1933), pp.187–98, at 198.