Description
Book SynopsisThomas Salmon (1647-1706) is remembered today for the fury with which Matthew Locke greeted his first foray into musical writing, the Essay to the Advancement of Musick (1672), and the near-farcical level to which the subsequent pamphlet dispute quickly descended. Salmon proposed a radical reform of musical notation, involving a new set of clefs which he claimed, and Locke denied, would make learning and performing music much easier (these writings are the subject of Volume I). The incident has tended to be passed over rather briefly in the scholarly literature, but beneath the unedifying invective employed by Salmon, Locke and their supporters, serious and novel statements were being made about what constituted musical knowledge and what was the proper way to acquire it. Later in his life Salmon devoted his attention to an exploration of the possible reform of musical pitch. He made or renewed contact with instrument-makers and performers in London, with the mathematician John Wallis
