HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ 



a trumpet, a violin or a human voice ? It will be 

 evident, also, that an answer to these questions con- 

 stitutes what Helmholtz calls the physiological basis 

 of sensations of tone. The answer, however, cannot 

 explain the aesthetic relations of music ; it cannot 

 explain why, of all the arts, this is the one which, while 

 it is the most intangible, yet stirs the very depths of 

 our being, and gives expression to feelings, longings, 

 aspirations, contemplations, that can never find full 

 recognition in the most splendid efforts of the painter 

 or the sculptor. The work of Helmholtz, in the 

 first place, laid the physiological foundation, and after- 

 wards he did little more than indicate the path along 

 which we must travel from the foundation into the 

 region of aesthetics. Himself a musician, not only 

 in the sense of enjoying music, but also because 

 he had studied theory as a musician is obliged to 

 do, and because he was thoroughly acquainted with 

 musical literature and especially with that of his 

 great countrymen Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Wagner, 

 and the brilliant galaxy of lesser German composers 

 he was eminently qualified for the task. Indeed, it 

 seemed as if Nature had raised in Helmholtz a man 

 of such a rare combination of endowments, that she 

 could safely whisper to him some of her secrets in 

 this borderland of physics, physiological action and 

 aesthetics, feeling assured that he would be a just and 

 faithful interpreter. 



Helmholtz was the first to examine the mechanism 



