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ANALYSES OF BOOKS.' 
0n th of S M,«ic° n ’/J® " “ Physiological Basis for the Theory 
m u r ^ y Hermann L. P. Helmholtz, M.D., Foreign 
MemPe. of the Royal Societies of London ind Edinburgh 
Second English Edition. Translated, thoroughly Revised 
and Coriedted, rendered conformable to the Fourth (last) 
German Edition of 1877, with numerous additional Notes 
to i8sT Vad , dltl0nal 1, PPendiX ’ brin S in S down information 
t nd especially adapted ^ the use of Musical 
Students, by A. J. Ellis, F.R.S., Ac. London: Lon- 
mans, Green, and Co. 0 
\V e have here an extraordinary work, the production of an author 
who combines attainments rarely met with in one and the same 
individual. Having been formerly Professor of Physiology j n 
ChaL of V ph ty -° f Heidelber g> he now fills, with distinction, ^he 
Chau of Physics in that of Berlin. This fact already bespeaks 
no small degree of versatility, since it is generally found that the 
t PdyS ‘ C i R a ? d f , the . pbysiol °gi st belong to two very distinct mental 
th P o T hl / 15 by ?° means a11 : Professor von Helmholtz is 
theoretically if not also practically, a musician. Had he not 
een such, the work before us could never have been written. 
Mr. Ellis, the translator, is also evidently a man of no small 
degree of versatility. That he is a musician is a matter of 
M U tL Se 'pLu n i the t ! tl o‘ P ^ ge he 1S descr ’bed as “twice President 
the Philological Society,” and “ Member of the Mathematical 
Society Had he been a specialist, limited to his speciality 
or, as the Americans profanely put it, “ a one-horse man,”— he 
could never have succeeded in producing a satisfactory version 
of Prof, von Helmholtz’s “ Ton-Empfindungen.” 
In his Introduction the author discusses the relations subsisting 
between physical and physiological acoustics on the one side° 
and of musical science and assthetics on the other. These dif- 
ferent disciplines have remained hitherto widely apart, and with 
out any special influence the one upon the other. He argues 
that music stands in a much closer and more immediate connec- 
tion with pure sensation than in any other of the fine arts. 
Hence the theory of the sensations of hearing is destined to play 
a much more important part in musical aesthetics than does, for 
example, the theory of chiaroscuro, or of perspective in painting 
He writes “ When in hearing a concert we recognise one tone 
as due to a violin, and another to a clarionet, our artistic enjoy- 
ment does not depend upon our conception of a violin or a 
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