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CHAPTER V.

ON THE ESSENTIAL MECHANISM OF THE PRINCIPAL MUSICAL INSTRU-
MENTS, CONSIDERED IN REFERENCE TO QUALITY.

ON CONSONANT TRIADS.

Successive intervals of the Major scale, § 105-Requisites for pure
intonation in keyed instruments, $$ 106-108-Tempering and
temperament, § 109-System of equal temperament, § 110-Its
defects, § 111-Its influence on vocal intonation, § 112-Cum-
brousness and inefficiency of the established pitch-notation for
vocal music, § 113-The 'Tonic Sol-Fa' pitch-notation, § 114-Its
simple and effective character, § 115-Relation of the physical
theory of consonance and dissonance to the æsthetics of Music,
§ 116-Importance of extreme discords; conclusion, § 117.

SOUND AND MUSIC.

CHAPTER I.

ON SOUND IN GENERAL, AND THE MODE OF ITS TRANSMISSION.

1. IN listening to a Sound, all that we are immediately conscious of is a peculiar sensation. This sensation obviously depends on the action of our organs of hearing; for, if we close our ears the sensation is greatly weakened, or, if originally but feeble, altogether extinguished. Persons whose auditory apparatus is malformed, or has been destroyed by disease, may be totally unconscious of any sound, even during a thunder-storm, or the discharge of artillery. These simple considerations should prepare us to expect that what we feel as Sound may be represented, externally to ourselves, by a state of things very different to the sensation we experience. Indeed this would only be in accordance with the

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modes of action of our other senses; for instance, the sensation of warmth, and its cause, a coal fire,-of fragrance, and its cause, a rose,—of pain, and its cause, a blow, are quite unlike each other. Analogy, then, indicates that some purely mechanical phenomena external to the ear will prove to be turned into the sensation we call Sound by a process carried on within that organ, and the brain with which it is in direct communication. This mechanical agency, whatever may be its nature, is usually set going at a distance from the ear, and, to reach it, must traverse the intervening space. In doing so, it can pass through solid and liquid as well as gaseous bodies. If one end of a felled tree is gently scratched with the point of a penknife, the sound is distinctly audible to a listener whose ear is pressed against the other end of the tree. When a couple of pebbles are knocked together under water, the sound of the blow reaches the ear after first passing through the intervening liquid. That Sound travels through the air is a matter of universal experience, and needs no illustration. In every case, accessible to common observation, where Sound passes from one point of space to another, it necessarily traverses matter, either in a solid, liquid, or gaseous form. We may hence conjecture that the presence of a material medium of some kind is indispensable to the transmis

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