On the Sensations of Tone

I have made many changes in re-editing the section on the History of Music and hope that I have improved its connection. I must, however, request the reader to regard this section as a mere compilation from secondary sources; I have neither time nor preliminary knowledge sufficient for original studies in this extremely difficult field. The older history of music, until the commencement of discant An early form of polyphonic music., is scarcely more than a confused heap of secondary subjects, while we can only make hypotheses concerning the principal matters in question. Of course, however, every theory of music must endeavor to bring some order into this chaos, and it cannot be denied that it contains many important facts.

For the representation of pitch in just or natural intonation, I have abandoned the method originally proposed by Hauptmann, which was not sufficiently clear in involved cases, and have adopted the system of Herr A. von Oettingen [page 276], as had already been done in M. G. Guéroult’s French translation of this book.

[A comparison of the third with the second editions, showing the changes and additions individually, is here omitted.]

If I may be allowed in conclusion to add a few words on the reception experienced by the Theory of Music here propounded, I should say that published objections almost exclusively relate to my Theory of Consonance, as if this were the pith of the matter. Those who prefer mechanical explanations express their regret at my having left any room in this field for the action of artistic invention and aesthetic inclination, and they have endeavored to complete my system by new numerical speculations. Other critics with more metaphysical proclivities have rejected my Theory of Consonance—and with it, as they imagine, my whole Theory of Music—as too coarsely mechanical.

I hope my critics will excuse me if I conclude, from the opposite nature of their objections, that I have struck out nearly the right path. As to my Theory of Consonance, I must claim it to be a mere systematization of observed facts (with the exception of the functions of the cochlea of the ear, which is moreover an hypothesis that may be entirely dispensed with). But I consider it a mistake to make the Theory of Consonance the essential foundation of the Theory of Music, and I had thought that this opinion was clearly enough expressed in my book. The essential basis of music is melody. Harmony has become, to Western Europeans during the last three centuries, an essential and, to our present taste, indispensable means of strengthening melodic relations; but finely developed music existed for thousands of years and still exists in non-European nations without any harmony at all. And to my metaphysico-aesthetic opponents I must reply that I cannot think I have undervalued the artistic emotions of the human mind in the Theory of Melodic Construction by endeavoring to establish the physiological facts on which aesthetic feeling is based. But to those who think I have not gone far enough in my physical explanations, I answer that, in the first place, a natural philosopher is never bound to construct systems about everything he knows and does not know; and secondly, that I should consider a theory which claimed to have shown that all the laws of modern thorough bass A system of musical shorthand using figures to indicate chords. were natural necessities, to stand condemned as having proven too much.

Musicians have found most fault with the manner in which I have characterized the minor mode. I must refer in reply to those very accessible documents: the musical compositions from A.D. 1500 to A.D. 1750, during which the modern minor was developed. These will show how slow and fluctuating was its development, and that the last traces of its incomplete state are still visible in the works of Sebastian Bach and Handel.