Artistic Temperaments | Dave Townsend and the English Concertina

A presentation exploring the English concertina from Dave Townsend of the Mellstock Band.

As ever, Artistic Temperaments Festival 2025 investigates different ways of tuning keyboards. This year we explore the English concertina, invented in 1829 by Sir Charles Wheatstone, and intended to rival the violin as a serious solo instrument.

Dave Townsend, founder of the Mellstock Band, is one of the great exponents of English concertina. He gives us a tour of its possibilities, including virtuoso pots-pourris from the young Sydney Smith, Victorian England’s most successful piano composer.

And, temperament? Ahah! The English concertina has separate buttons for D sharp and E flat, G sharp and A flat – the only instrument designed for unequal temperaments from the very beginning. Wheatstone was a scientist, who went on to give his name to the ‘Wheatstone bridge’, still very much part of electrical engineering.