TRANSLATOR’S NOTICE

TO THE

SECOND ENGLISH EDITION.

In preparing a new edition of this translation of Professor Helmholtz’s great work on the Sensations of Tone—which was originally made from the third German edition of 1870 and finished in June 1875—my first care was to make it exactly conform to the fourth German edition of 1877 (the last to appear). The numerous alterations made in the fourth edition are specified in the author's preface. To ensure that no merely verbal changes escaped me, every sentence of my translation was carefully re-read against the German text. This enabled me to correct several misprints and mistranslations that had escaped my previous, very careful revision, and I have taken the opportunity to improve the language in many places. Scarcely a page has escaped such changes.

Because Professor Helmholtz’s book has taken its place as a work that all candidates for musical degrees are expected to study, my next care was to explain—by supplementary notes or brief insertions, always carefully distinguished from the author's by being enclosed in brackets [ ]—any difficulties the student might encounter. I aimed to show how to acquire an insight into the author’s theories, which were quite strange to musicians when they appeared in the first German edition of 1863, but which, in the twenty-two years that have since elapsed, have been accepted as essentially valid by those competent to pass judgment.

For this purpose, I have devised the Harmonical (explained on pages 466–469), by which, as shown in numerous footnotes, almost every point of theory can be illustrated. I have arranged for it to be readily procurable at a moderate cost. It need scarcely be said that my interest in this instrument is purely scientific.

My own Appendix has been entirely rewritten; much has been rejected and the rest condensed. However, as may be seen in the Contents, I have added a considerable amount of information about points hitherto little known, such as the determination and history of musical pitch, non-harmonic scales, tuning, etc. In particular, I have provided an account of work done recently on beats, combinational tones, vowel analysis, and synthesis, mostly since the fourth German edition appeared.

Finally, I wish to gratefully acknowledge the assistance, sometimes very great, which I have received from Messrs. D. J. Blaikley, R. H. M. Bosanquet, Colin Brown, A. Cavaillé-Coll, A. J. Hipkins, W. Huggins (F.R.S.), Shuji Isawa, H. Ward Poole, R. S. Rockstro, Hermann Smith, Steinway, Augustus Stroh, and James Paul White, as will be seen by referring to their names in the Index.

ALEXANDER J. ELLIS.

25 ARGYLL ROAD, KENSINGTON:
July, 1885.