It is now some years since Ferruccio Benvenuto Busoni, Italian master-pianist and modernist, startled the musical intelligenzia by advocating an entirely new musical scale. It was to be composed of quarter-tones, the pitch of each two adjacent tones being only half of what it is on a piano. It was then already noted that music played on a quarter-tone piano would only sound "out of tune"—and that this would be no novelty at all. Quarter-tone effects, it was added, were achieved by every Hawaiian guitar-player when he executed that lugubrious wailing slide along...
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