Alexander John Ellis

Alexander John Ellis was born Alexander John Sharpe on June 14, 1814, in Hoxton, Middlesex, and died in London on October 28, 1890. He studied mathematics and philology at Trinity College Cambridge, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1837. Ellis later became a phonetician, whose work in vocal and musical pitch, speech, and song also influenced the field of musicology. Among his most important contributions were the annotated translation of Hermann von Helmholtz’s On the Sensations of Tone and his development of the notion of cent for musical intervals.

Key publications:

• Ellis, Alexander John. The alphabet of nature; or, Contributions towards a more accurate analysis and symbolization of spoken sounds; with some account of the principal phonetical alphabets hitherto proposed. London: Bagster and Sons, 1845.
• Ellis, Alexander John. A plea for phonotypy and phonography; or, Speech-printing and speech-writing. Bath: Isaac Pitman, 1845.
• Ellis, Alexander John. A plea for phonetic spelling, or, The necessity of orthographic reform. 2d ed. London: Fred Pittman, 1848.
• Ellis, Alexander John. The ethnical alphabet, or alphabet of nations, being an extension of Messers, Pitman and Ellis’s english phonetic alphabet. London: Fred Pitman, 1848.
• Ellis, Alexander John. The essentials of phonetics; containing the theory of a universal alphabet, together with its practical application as an ethnical alphabet to the reduction of old languae, written or unwritten, to one uniform system of writing, with nomerous examples; adapted to the use of phoneticians, philologists, etymologistsm ethnographists, rravellers, and missionaries. In lieu of a second edition of the “Alphabet of nature.” London: Fred Pitman, 1848.
• Ellis, Alexander John. “On the conditions, extent, and realization of a perfect musical scale on instruments with fixed tones.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 13 (1863–64): 93–108.
• Ellis, Alexander John. “On the physical constitution and relations of musical chords.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 13 (1863–64): 392–404.
• Ellis, Alexander John. “On the temperament of musical instruments with fixed tones.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 13 (1863–64): 404–422.
• Ellis, Alexander John. On early english pronunciation. London: Philological Society, 1869.
• Ellis, Alexander John. On musical duodenes or the theory of constructing instrument with fixed tones in just or practically just intonation. London: Taylor and Francis, 1874.
• Ellis, Alexander John. “On the sensitiveness of the ear to pitch and change of pitch in music.” Proceedings of the Musical Association 3rd Sessions (1876–1877): 1–32.
• Ellis, Alexander John. On the basis of music, containing an elementary account of the nature of musical notes and chords, the generation of scales and modulations, and the origin and effects of the usual tempered scales. London: C. F. Hodgson & Son, 1877.
• Ellis, Alexander John. The History of Musical Pitch. London: W. Trounce, 1880.
• Ellis, Alexander John. “On the musical scales of various nations.” Journal of the Society of Arts 33 (1885): 485–527.
• Ellis, Alexander John. English dialects, their sounds and homes. London: Published for the English Dialect Society, 1890.
• Helmholtz, Hermann von. On the sensations of tone as a physiological basis for the theory of music, translated by Alexander J. Ellis. London: Longmans, Green, and Co, 1895.

Compiled by JH | Picture: CC 0 | Wikimedia