Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music.

£1,500 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

from the library of oliver sacks First English language edition, from the library of neurologist Oliver Sacks, with his octopus bookplate. This English edition was based on the text of the third edition of Helmholtz's Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als Physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie von Musik, published in 1863. It 'laid the groundwork for all subsequent research in the field of audition. It contains Helmholtz's resonance theory of hearing, the first elaborate theory of the mechanism of the ear, which originally posited that the ear detects differences in pitch through the microscopic rods of Corti, strung out in gradually increasing size through the cochlea. Helmholtz likened these rods to progressively smaller tuned resonators, each of which responded to a sound wave of progressively higher pitch, exciting adjacent nerve endings when then carried the impulse to the brain. Helmholtz later altered his theory to state that the cochlea's resonators were the transverse fibers of the basilar membrane instead of the rods of Corti; with this single modification, Helmholtz's resonance theory remained unchalleneged for over two decades. Helmholtz also explained differences in timbre as cause by differences of upper partial tones, and applied his discoveries to music theory by explaining that consonances and dissonances were produced by more or less coincident upper partial tones' (Hook and Norman, Norman Library of Science and Medicine 1044). The previous owner of this c

• Binding: Hardcover

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