source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 09:25:23 -0800 Subject: Larry A. Hanson From: John Chalmers I was saddened to hear of Larry A. Hanson's death from Neil in his post this morning. Larry was a brilliant and creative theorist who had been collaborating with Ervin Wilson since 1978. In addition to his championing 34-tet and commissioning the guitar that Neil plays so well, Larry independently invented a unique type of generalized keyboard in 1942 for his wife Evelyn, a concert pianist. Although his keyboard was also intended for 53-tone equal temperament, the design was different from Bosanquet's. After the war, he called Loren Hammond of the Hammond Organ Company, who, alas, showed little interest. Larry put his notes aside until 1977, when his daughte Chris came across them while helping him straighten up some files. In 1978, Chris saw an article about Tom Stone and his interchangeable fingerboard guitar in Rolling Stones magazine. This article led to a meeting with Ervin Wilson, who was immediately enthusiastic about Hanson's design. Ervin pointed out that Larry's keyboard could be construed as based on a two-interval pattern (MOS) generated by cycle of 19 minor thirds. At Ervin's urging, Larry published a definitive article on the keyboard in Xenharmonikon 12 (1989), when Daniel Wolf was the editor. Erv prepared drawings which showed how various equal temperaments and several forms of Just Intonation (the 13-limit Ogdoadic Diamond and two 5-limit triadic arrays) could be mapped over the array of keys. At this time, Larry also invented a new type of digital shaped like interlocking, block "7's" to facilitate fingering. Larry also maintained his interested in the purely theoretical side of xenharmonics. He was extremely good at finding relevant articles on number theory in the Cal Tech Library (from which graduated in 1942), and he applied his mathematical ability and computational skills to many theoretical problems in tuning theory, usually in collaboration with Ervin Wilson. He was a great resource for the xenharmonic community and he will be greatly missed by all of us who knew him and worked with him. --John Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 27 Mar 1997 18:53 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA19646; Thu, 27 Mar 1997 18:53:37 +0100 Received: from ella.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA19643 Received: from by ella.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) id JAA23669; Thu, 27 Mar 1997 09:52:04 -0800 Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 09:52:04 -0800 Message-Id: <009B1E680E1E120E.7823@vbv40.ezh.nl> Errors-To: madole@mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@ella.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@ella.mills.edu