488 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



15. 

 "Timbre" 

 defined. 



series of simple but ingenious apparatus by which these 

 partial notes could be analysed, isolated, and made speci- 

 ally audible, or by which the ground tone could be 

 purified, and thus led up to his conception of the human 

 ear — the different parts of which he analysed anatomic- 

 ally and acoustically — as a most delicate resonator which 

 separately absorbed the different elementary periodic 

 movements that constitute musical sounds, the different 

 nerve-fibres carrying them separately to the central 

 organ of perception.^ On the bases of these distinc- 

 tions, Helmholtz succeeded in giving an accurate defini- 

 tion " of that property of musical notes termed " timbre " 

 by the French, " Klangfarbe " by the Germans — that 

 peculiar colouring or texture which characterises the 

 same note^ if produced by different instruments. He 



^ See ' Die Lehre von den 

 Tonempfindungen,' 1st ed., 1863, 

 pp. 92, 95, 97. "The main result 

 of our description of the ear can 

 be thus stated, that we have found 

 that everywhere tlie ends of the 

 auditory nerve are connected with 

 special auxiliarj' apparatus, jjartly 

 elastic, partly solid, which under 

 the influence of external vibrations 

 are made to vibrate correspond- 

 ingly and then probably affect 

 and agitate the nerve-substance " 

 (p. 212). 



■■^ Helmholtz was the first to give 

 a positive definition of "timbre." 

 As he himself says (p. 114), before 

 him it meant all the peculiarities 

 of a musical sound which are not 

 defined by its intensity or its posi- 

 tion in the scale— -i.e., its " pitch." 

 Of these he eliminates all such as 

 are connected with the beginning, 

 rising, and dying away of sounds, 

 and deals only with sounds which 

 are uniformly maintained (p. 116). 



^ The terminology of acoustics 



and of music has been considerably 

 changed, especially in this country, 

 through scientific literature, in 

 which the work of Helmholtz 

 forms a kind of epoch. Accord- 

 ing to Lord Rayleigh ('Sound,' 

 vol. i. § 22, 1st ed.), the word 

 " tone " in the English language 

 has been adopted by Tyudall to 

 denote a musical sound which 

 cannot be further resolved. The 

 word was used before, but in a 

 general sense, not limited only to 

 sounds, and where now " tone " is 

 used in works on acoustics, the 

 word "note" was more usually 

 employed. Sir John Herschel 

 ( ' Encyclop. Metrop.,' article 

 " Sound," 1845) does not con- 

 sistently use the word " tone " 

 as an equivalent for the German 

 "Ton," but makes use of "sound" 

 or " note " or " tone " promiscu- 

 ously. Still more uncertain was 

 the terminology by which to ex- 

 press the quality of a musical 

 sound other than loudness and 



