Ambrose Warren

Ambrose Warren was an English amateur musician, born around 1656 and dead at some point between December 1727 and July 1729, although the exact date of his death is not known with certainty. His significance lies chiefly in his theoretical contribution to tuning, at a time when the debate over temperament systems was very lively in England.

He worked as a master at Tenison's School, located in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields, in London. Around 1725 he published in the capital The Tonometer, a treatise in which he advocated the two-string monochord as a tool for representing the 32 distinct notes contained in four octaves of the common scale. Warren claimed to have invented the instrument and cited Michael Wise as one of his early mentors. His stated purpose was to help performers, practical musicians and instrument makers understand, by ear, what they were doing.

The proposed system divided the octave into 32 parts by means of a series of string lengths calculated on a unit of 1000. Warren stressed its practical usefulness for students, especially those who devoted themselves to singing or the violin.

His legacy is modest but documented: the German theorist J. A. Scheibe discussed his system in his work Über die musikalische Komposition, of 1773.