Alexander John Ellis

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Alexander John Ellis (or Alexander Sharpe) (14 June 1814 - 28 October 1890) was an English philologist and music theorist. He is noted for translating and extensively annotating Hermann Helmholtz's On the Sensations of Tone, in which he among other things introduces the notation of cents for musical intervals.

He is sometimes considered to be one of the founders of the field ethnomusicology because of his work in the science of sound. He was especially interested in the exploration of pitch and its relationship to speech and song.

[edit] Reference

• M. K. C. MacMahon, Ellis , Alexander John (1814–1890), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 14 June 2006