REVIEWS 705 



Samuel Pepys said, more than two centuries ago, that music might be enjoyed 

 to much better effect " were the doctrine of it brought within the simplicity, 

 perspicuity, and certainty common to all other parts of mathematical knowledge, 

 and of which I take this to be equally capable with any of them, in lieu of that 

 fruitless jargon of obsolete terms, and other unnecessary perplexities and obscurities, 

 wherewith it has been ever hitherto delivered." The italicised words show that this 

 fault was patent even then, but this book is written in a manner which puts such 

 books as Pepys had on music quite into the shade. The author says, " The scientific 

 aspect of Hyperacoustics as yet lacks the general language to connect its concepts 

 with common thought," and he thereupon invents a new terminology, and says, 

 It is a somewhat bold and solemn undertaking to attempt to supply this de- 

 ficiency of language, whose necessity may not even command assent." His 

 attempt has made quite ordinary and well-known facts quite unrecognisable. 

 There is, perhaps, no science in which our ideas are so much swayed by words 

 as the science of music. With an imperfect knowledge of the phenomena we 

 frame inexact terms, and then, taking these shifty terms for standpoints, build up a 

 rickety system. This result is shown in this book in which the nomenclature is 

 corrupted partly by the pressing of various languages into one and partly by the 

 employment of old terms in new meanings, which causes endless confusion in 

 the mind. This amounts to the creation of a new language which very few 

 musicians or scientists will take the trouble to acquire, unless the new knowledge 

 gained is far greater than that obtainable from this book. Moreover, when you 

 have, as in this attempt, obscurity of thought hiding under obscurity of language, 

 it becomes extremely difficult to unravel anything useful. 



The book begins with a study of tones, pitch, and intervals, and then goes on 

 to discuss scales and chords. The subject ot intervals, which is complex, is made 

 much more complicated by the dragging in of the means of another art— namely, 

 by the dragging in of the names of colours, and the formation of what is called a 

 "chrome system." The "chromes" are simply colour-names for intervals, for 

 which there is no justification whatever, and their use is persisted in right through 

 the book. It does not simplify intervals, or make them clearer, to say a major- 

 third is green, a minor-third violet, and a major-sixth yellow : it is of no help 

 for demonstration, and is a useless burden to the memory. The author says 

 ingenuously, "Colour symbolisation may, of course, be carried to a considerable 

 extent, but nothing is gained by complexity." He then invents the term "fluent," 

 which may be regarded "as the operator of conversion between one chrome and 

 another," and says, "We might use the analogy of agencies converting colours 

 from one to another, by any well-known optical, chemical, thermal, etc., processes, 

 to represent the particular fluents — e.g. acid-alkali, hot-cold, haemoglobin-chloro- 

 phyll, spectral left-right, etc., etc." : the confusion in this sentence shows where 

 colour symbolisation has led the author and into what perplexities such ardent 

 changes of nomenclature may lead us. 



Of such facts as can be dug out of this book there is not much to be said by 

 way of criticism, for, as the author owns himself, there is very little that is new to 

 be found in it, the material being mainly "a collection and arrangement of the 

 thoughts of others." There is, on account of the modern developments of the art 

 of music, a need of such a book, or series of books, such as the author has planned 

 out, and if only he would translate this first volume from the " fruitless jargon " in 

 which it is written into English, and would write the remaining volumes in the 

 same language, such a work might be very useful. 



H. G. P. 



