On the Sensation of Tone As a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music

…optics and in his masterly On the Sensation of Tone As a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (1863). What he tried to do, without complete success, was to trace sensations through the sensory nerves and anatomical structures (such as the inner ear) to the brain in the hope…

His book On the Sensations of Tone As a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (1863) is one of the classics of acoustics. In addition, he constructed a set of resonators, covering much of the audio spectrum, which were used in the spectral analysis of musical…

…by Hermann von Helmholtz in On the Sensations of Tone (1863) is perhaps as helpful as any. An initial theory was based on the notion that dissonance is a product of beats, which result from simultaneous tones or their upper overtones of slightly differing frequencies. Another explanation, offered later by…