AUTHOR'S PREFACE

TO THE

FIRST GERMAN EDITION.

In laying before the public the result of eight years' labor, I must first pay a debt of gratitude. The following investigations could not have been accomplished without the construction of new instruments, which did not enter into the inventory of a physiological institute and which far exceeded in cost the usual resources of a German philosopher. The means for obtaining them came to me from unusual sources. The apparatus for the artificial construction of vowels, described on pages 121 to 126, I owe to the munificence of his Majesty King Maximilian of Bavaria, to whom German science is indebted, in so many of its fields, for ever-ready sympathy and assistance. For the construction of my harmonium in perfectly natural intonation, described on page 316, I was able to use the Soemmering prize which had been awarded to me by the Senckenberg Physical Society (die Senckenbergische naturforschende Gesellschaft) at Frankfurt-on-the-Main. While publicly repeating the expression of my gratitude for this assistance in my investigations, I hope that the investigations themselves, as set forth in this book, will prove far better than mere words how earnestly I have endeavored to make a worthy use of the means thus placed at my command.

H. HELMHOLTZ.

HEIDELBERG: October, 1862.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

TO THE

THIRD GERMAN EDITION.

The present third edition has been much more altered in some parts than the second. Thus, in the sixth chapter, I have been able to make use of the new physiological and anatomical researches on the ear. This has led to a modification of my view of the action of Corti's arches The organ in the inner ear involved in hearing.. Again, it appears that the peculiar articulation between the auditory ossicles Tiny bones in the middle ear: the hammer and the anvil. called the 'hammer' and 'anvil' might easily cause, within the ear itself, the formation of harmonic upper partial tones Overtones or harmonics. for simple tones that are sounded loudly. By this means, that peculiar series of upper partial tones—on the existence of which the present theory of music is essentially founded—receives a new subjective value, entirely independent of external alterations in the quality of tone. To illustrate the anatomical descriptions, I have been able to add a series of new woodcuts, principally from Henle's Manual of Anatomy, with the author's permission, for which I here take the opportunity of publicly thanking him.