In-Reply-To: <007401c1c043$35dcf720$af48620c@...>
monz wrote:

> paul erlich pointed me to a reference in _Grove's Dictionary_
> which i've quoted on my "quarter-tones" Tuning Dictioanry entry:
> http://www.ixpres.com/interval/dict/qt.htm
>
> it discusses the Arab-world's adoption of 24edo in 1932.

Those look like the quotes I sent to the list a while back, and describe a
failed attempt to adopt 24-equal. Did you check the full entry while you
were in the library? There are some more interesting details in there.

I have another reference, from Manik, for the first mention of 24-equal
for Arabic music: E Smith, "A treatise on Arab music, chiefly from a work
by Michail Meshakah of Damascus", JAOS, I, 1849. That's interesting in
the Syria is linked to 53-equal by Touma, and the New Grove puts the
Syrian contingent in the anti-24= camp. But the first advocacy seems to
be (indirectly) by a Syrian.

Speaking of Manik, he also says that the original edition of Helmholtz
shows syntonic instead of Pythagorean commas in Safi al-Din's 17 note
scale. This betrays a schismic thinking, possibly unconscious. Ellis
"corrected" the commas in his translation.

Do you want any details on the Old Moorish Lute Tutor? That'll be going
back to the library soon. It describes Pythagorean frets at the tone and
minor third.


Graham