A 41-cent emendation: a textual problem in Wheatstone's publication of Giulio Regondi's Serenade for English concertina and piano
Allan Atlas is Distinguished Professor of Music at The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, where he is director of the Center for the Study of Free-Reed Instruments. He plays the English concertina, is a member of the New York Victorian Consort, and is currently working on a study entitled The gendered concertina in Victorian England: ladies in the Wheatstone sales ledgers (1835–1870). aatlas{at}gc.cuny.edu
A wrong (or at least highly suspect) note in the C. Wheatstone & Co. publication of Giulio Regondi's Serenade for English concertina and piano (1859) should probably be emended with the mean-tone temperament of the instrument in mind. Until the late 1850s/early 1860s—and though published in 1859, the Serenade was probably composed in the 1840s—concertina manufacturers used a mean-tone temperament in which they divided the octave into 14 notes, differentiating between—and providing separate buttons for—E
/D
, on the one hand, and A/G, on the other, with the flat note of each pair being tuned 41 cents higher than the sharp note. The emended reading of the suspect passage suggests that the composer wished to exploit this microtonal resource. This may well be the only instance in which the likely emendation of a wrong or suspect note is dictated entirely by the particular temperament of the instrument for which the piece was written. Finally, attention is called to other instances of such mean-tone-inspired chromaticism in works by George Alexander Macfarren and Joseph Warren.
Key Words: English concertina • Giulio Regondi • temperament • chromaticism • George Alexander Macfarren • Joseph Warren