Joshua Steele
1700-1791
In 1775, Joshua Steele published his book on prosody called An essay towards establishing the melody and measure of speech to be expressed and perpetuated by peculiar symbols. This was a major study of speech prosody. In his book, Steele creates a notation system for five separate areas of speech intonation: accent, emphasis, quantity, pause, and force. Steele used a modified musical notation including a musical staff to depict intonation.
Steele’s emphasis was in representing the melody of speech, which he called accent. He created a musical staff within which he traced changes in pitch, using lines and curves rather than musical notes. To trace pitch change in speech, Steele duplicated it with a musical instrument (bass viol) and then drew the changes on his musical staff.
Steele’s musical scale consisted to tones, semi-tones, and quarter tones. The musical staff had bold lines that traced the “slides” representing pitch and stress.
Writings by Joshua Steele
Steele, Joshua (1775). An essay towards establishing the melody and measure of speech to be expressed and perpetuated by peculiar symbols.
Steele, Joshua (1779). Prosodia rationalis: Or an Essay towards establishing the melody and measure of speech (2nd ed) London.
Writings about Joshua Steele
Newman, John Benjamin (1950). Joshua Steele. Prosody in Speech Education. Ph.D. dissertation. New York University, 1950.
Barker, Marie (1924). Joshua Steele on speech-melody (1779). The Modern Language Review, 18, 2, 169-174.
Hatfield, Hunter (2010). Joshua Steele 1775: Speech intonation and music tonality. www2.hawaii.edu/~hunterh/Docs/JoshuaSteel.pdf
Joshua Steele. (2010). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 07, 2010, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: