Note 10 — III PHYSICAL VIEW FORMATION OF SOUNDS BY THE VOCAL ORGAN

“It is not possible to sound a stretched string as a whole without at the same time causing to a greater or less extent its subdivision; that is to say, superposed upon the vibrations of the string we have always, in a greater or less degree, the vibrations of its aliquot parts. The higher notes produced by these latter vibrations are called the harmonics of the string. And so it is with other sounding bodies; we have, in all cases, a co-existence of vibrations. Higher tones mingle with the fundamental tone, and it is their intermixture which determines what, for want of a better term, we call the quality of the sound. The French call it timbre, and the Germans call it Klangfarbe. It is this union of high and low tones that enables us to distinguish one musical instrument from another. A clarionet and a violin, for example, though tuned to the same fundamental note, are not confounded.…

“All bodies and instruments, then, employed for producing musical sounds, emit, besides their fundamental tones, tones due to higher order of vibrations. The Germans embrace all such sounds under the general term Obertöne. I think it will be an advantage if we, in England, adopt the term over-tones, as the equivalent of the term employed in Germany. One has occasion to envy the power of the German language to adapt itself to requirements of this nature. The term Klangfarbe, for example, employed by Helmholtz, is exceedingly expressive, and we need its equivalent also. You know that color depends upon rapidity of vibrations—that blue light bears to red the same relation that a high tone does to a low one. A simple color has but one rate of vibration, and it may be regarded as the analogue of a simple tone in music. A tone, then, may be defined as the product of a vibration which cannot be decomposed into more simple ones. A compound color, on the contrary, is produced by the admixture of two or more simple ones; and an assemblage of tones, such, as we obtain when the fundamental tone and the harmonics of a string sound together, is called by the Germans a Klang. May we not employ the English word clang to denote the same thing, and thus give the term a precise scientific meaning akin to its popular one? And may we not, like Helmholtz, add the word color or tint to denote the character of the clang, using the term clang-tint as the equivalent of Klangfarbe?” (Sound: A course of Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain by John Tyndall, LL.D., F. R. S., Professor of Nat. Phil. in the Royal Institution and in the Royal School of Mines. English edition, pp. 116–118.)—Tr.

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