THE RESEARCHES OF DR. R. KCENIG 

 ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF MUSICAL HARMONY, AND TIMBRE. 



By Prof. Sylvanus P. Thompson. 



I. 



Not often does it fall to the lot of a scieutific mau to become the 

 mouthpiece of another whose researches have lasted over a quarter of 

 a century ; yet this is the enviable position in which I find myself on 

 this occasion as the spokesman of Dr. Rudolph Ka^uig, who is kuown 

 not only as the constructor of the finest acoustical instruments in the 

 world, but as an investigator of great originality and distinction, and 

 author of numerous memoirs on acoustics. Dr. Kti?nig, who has of 

 late made very important contributions to our knowledge of the phys- 

 ical basis of music, using apparatus immeasurably superior to any 

 hitherto employed in experimental investigations of this subject, has 

 on various occasions, when I have visited him in Paris, shown me these 

 instruments, and repeated to me the results of his researches. Impor- 

 tant as these are, they are all too little kuown in this country, even by 

 the professors of jihysics. It was, therefore, with no little satisfaction 

 that the Council of the Physical Society learned that Dr. Kcenig was 

 willing to send over to London for exhibition on this occasion the in- 

 struments and apparatus used in these researches. And their satisfac- 

 tion to-day is heightened by the fact that Dr. Kcenig has himself very 

 kindly come over to demonstrate his own researches, and has given us 

 the opportunity to welcome him personally amongst us. 



The splendid apparatus around me belongs to Dr. Kcenig and forms 

 but a very small part of the collection which adorns his atelier on the 

 Quai d'Aujou. He lives and works in seclusion, surrounded by his in- 

 struments, even as our own Faraday lived and worked amongst his 

 electric and magnetic apparatus. His great tonometer, now nearly 

 completed, comprises a set of standard tuning forks, adjusted each one 

 by his own hands, ranging from 20 vibrations per second up to nearly 

 40,000, with perfect continuity^ many of the forks being furnished with 

 sliding adjustments, so as to give by actual marks uj)on them any de- 



*Read to the Physical Societj' of Loudon, May 16, 1890. (From Katiire, Jauuary 

 1, 8, and 15, 1891, vol. XLiii, pp. 199-'^0:5, "224-227, aud 249-253.) 



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