Anthony Osborne was educated at UCS. He trained in architecture at the Bartlett School, London and in Paris during the 1950s. Studies included classical Greek Orders, Gothic and Renaissance, emphasising scale and proportion. He also attended David Bomberg''s inspirational drawing classes. Osborne visited works of Frank Lloyd Wright and Corbusier.

Always intrigued by proportion in buildings, it was not until learning piano following retirement, that Osborne became fascinated by this fundamental link between music and architecture. Although these proportional and mathematical connections are obscure in written form, he realised temperament could readily be illustrated by graphics. He set about understanding the complexities and attempting to explain the subject in the simplest possible way. This book is the result.

Most books on the subject of sound, music and the keyboard are written by scientists, musicologists or philosophers. Excellent works in themselves, they tend to be totally obscure except to specialists. As an architect I have am interested in proportion as applied to buildings and intrigued by the geometry of the Golden Section. In 1982 I was involved with the refurbishment of the King’s Observatory in Kew; originally designed by Sir William Chambers for George the Third and built in time for the transit of Venus across the sun’s disk in 1769. The king was interested in astronomy and, especially after Sir Cloudesly Shovel lost his ship off the Scillies due to navigational error, encouraged the development of accurate clocks in order to establish longitude and help improve the safety of his fleet at sea.

More recently, I began to study the piano and, although my fingers were no longer adept, the meaning of intervals and the Theory of Consonance which so obviously had links with architecture through proportion and mathematics, clearly required exploration. Being neither a scientist nor philosopher and of limited music ability, I had to approach the subject from scratch seeking to understand how the keyboard came to have its present form. From my architectural background, I feel I can contribute some knowledge of geometry and proportion and perhaps explain a few of the complexities by diagrams.

The subject is vast. Material is available from over 2500 years ago, right up to the present day. One can explore, with Pythagoras, the harmonics of a single taut gut string or marvel at the structure of a honeycomb or the solar system. One can contemplate the orbits of the planets or the extraordinary moons of Jupiter. We can consider the logic of Dr Doppler as he listened to the new trains passing by and perhaps question some accepted theories about the creation of the universe.

This is not a scientific or musical treatise and certainly does not pre-suppose any knowledge of either subject. Indeed it is not really about music at all but rather the proportion and harmony that surrounds us in so many ways. It may interest those who are curious to know more about the familiar keyboard. This book contains a few simple tables but nearly all working can be checked on a pocket calculator. The fairly straightforward calculations behind the design of the keyboard have been obscured by complicated theory and by sheer mysticism making it so confusing that many regard it as a closed book.

Understanding of the keyboard will not make us better musicians; driving a car does not require us to know how to tune the engine. However the subject is an enthralling one and a little inside knowledge will do music making no harm.

Anthony Osborne   2005