Transactions of The Royal Society of Canada 



SECTION III 

 Series III MAY, 1919 Vol. XIII 



PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 



The Development of Modern Acoustics 



By Louis V. King, D.Sc, F.R.S.C. 

 (Read May Meeting, 1919.) 



A few years ago one would have pronounced the science of 

 acoustics dead. A few papers on minor researches were published 

 from time to time, but, on the whole, text-books of physics reiterated 

 the same old experiments, few of which had any real application to 

 music and fewer still to the affairs of everyday life. The advanced 

 musical student might, it is true, read Helmholtz's great work on 

 "Sensations of Tone," and Rayleigh's two mathematical volumes 

 on the "Theory of Sound." He would still find, however, that al- 

 though nearly all acoustic phenomena could be accounted for by the 

 higher developments of Newtonian mathematics, few of the questions 

 dealt with had much concern with human interests. 



Many of the most recent developments of our modern civilization 

 are associated with the sense of hearing. Music, which may be said 

 to be the art of thinking in terms of musical sounds, has to-day at- 

 tained to a degree of refinement little dreamt of by the great com- 

 posers of the past. Associated with musical composition are the 

 instruments by means of which we are enabled to communicate 

 musical thoughts to others. These two factors have continually 

 reacted on each other with the result that music has evolved with a 

 rapidity much greater than is to be observed in other forms of art. 

 It is generally stated that before the days of Bach there was practically 

 no appreciation of the beauty or meaning of a number of musical 

 notes played simultaneously, that is, of a chord, and that from that 

 time dates the manifestation of a new vehicle of thought. Such a 

 physical invention as that of the equally tempered scale has, through 

 the simplification of musical instruments, made modern music possible. 



These few remarks will indicate the close relationship existing 

 between the development of music and the invention and perfection 

 of musical instruments. Hitherto there seems to have been little 



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