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The Helmholtz Legacy in Physiological Acoustics

  • Book
  • © 2014

Overview

Authors:
  1. Erwin Hiebert

    1. Silver Spring, USA

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  • Explores the interactions between science and music in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
  • Examines and evaluates the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, Max Planck, Shohé Tanaka and Adriaan Fokker, leading physicists and physiologists who made significant contributions to the theory of music
  • Addresses how just intonation came to intersect with the history of keyboard instruments and exert an influence on the development of Western music
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: Archimedes (ARIM, volume 39)

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Table of contents (27 chapters)

  1. Max Planck

    1. From Thermodynamics to the Quantum of Action

      • Erwin Hiebert
      Pages 131-139

    2. Objective Laws as Stepping Stones to the Deity of Creation

      • Erwin Hiebert
      Pages 141-192

  2. Adriaan Fokker. Theoretical Physics and Just Intonation Keyboards

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 193-193
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    2. Fokker: Theoretical Physicist

      • Erwin Hiebert
      Pages 195-205

    3. Fokker and the Teyler Foundation

      • Erwin Hiebert
      Pages 207-211

    4. Fokker Music Theorist

      • Erwin Hiebert
      Pages 213-217

    5. Temperament and the Circle of Fifths

      • Erwin Hiebert
      Pages 219-226

    6. Arithmetic Reflections on Music

      • Erwin Hiebert
      Pages 227-234

    7. Just Intonation and the 12-tone System (1949)

      • Erwin Hiebert
      Pages 235-240

    8. Confronting Developments in Contemporary Music

      • Erwin Hiebert
      Pages 241-249

    9. Refinement of Pitch

      • Erwin Hiebert
      Pages 251-252

    10. Neue Musik mit 31 Tönen

      • Erwin Hiebert
      Pages 253-260

  3. Back Matter

    Pages 261-269
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Keywords

About this book

This book explores the interactions between science and music in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century. It examines and evaluates the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, Max Planck, Shohé Tanaka, and Adriaan Fokker, leading physicists and physiologists who were committed to understanding crucial aesthetic components of the art of music, including the standardization of pitch and the implementation of various types of intonations. With a mixture of physics, physiology, and aesthetics, author Erwin Hiebert addresses throughout the book how just intonation came to intersect with the history of keyboard instruments and exert an influence on the development of Western music. He begins with the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, a leading nineteenth-century physicist and physiologist who not only made important contributions in vision, optics, electrodynamics and thermodynamics, but also helped advanced the field of music theory as well. The author traces the Helmholtzian trends of thoughtthat become inherently more complex by reaching beyond the sciences to perform a bridge with aesthetics and the diverse ways in which the human mind interprets or is taught, in different cultures, to interpret and understand music. Next, the author explores the works of other key physicists and physiologists who were influenced by Helmholtz and added to his legacy. He examines Japanese music theory student Shohé Tanaka, who sought to design a harmonium that was not based on equal temperament but rather on just intonation. Dutch physicist Adriaan Daniel Fokker, who arranged for organs to be built based on 31-tones per octave, orchestrated concerts for these new instruments and even attempted to compose microtonal music, or music whose tonality is based on intervals smaller than the typical twelve semitones of Western music.

Reviews

“It reflects the work of two decades during which he studied the intertwinings of science and music in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. … the book presents them in the best possible way to facilitate further research. Readers will profit from the rich archival materials that have been translated into English and can easily be traced through the separate bibliographies that conclude each chapter.” (Julia Kursell, Isis, Vol. 107 (3), September, 2016)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Silver Spring, USA

    Erwin Hiebert

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Helmholtz Legacy in Physiological Acoustics

  • Authors: Erwin Hiebert

  • Series Title: Archimedes

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06602-8

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Philosophy and Religion (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-06601-1Published: 01 July 2014

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-319-38352-1Published: 17 September 2016

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-06602-8Published: 12 June 2014

  • Series ISSN: 1385-0180

  • Series E-ISSN: 2215-0064

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXIII, 269

  • Number of Illustrations: 12 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Aesthetics, History of Science, Acoustics, Music

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