Popular scientific lectures. Ernst Mach

process of perception, in every observation, the attention plays a highly important part. We need not look about us long for proofs of this. You receive, for example, a letter written in a very poor hand. Do your best, you cannot make it out. You put together now these, now those lines, yet you cannot construct from them a single intelligible character. Not until you direct your attention to groups of lines which really belong together, is the reading of the letter possible. Manuscripts, the letters of which are formed of minute figures and scrolls, can only be read at a considerable distance, where the attention is no longer diverted from the significant outlines to the details. A beautiful example of this class is furnished by the famous iconographs of Giuseppe Arcimboldo in the basement of the Belvedere gallery at Vienna. These are symbolic representations of water, fire, etc.: human heads composed of aquatic animals and of combustibles. At a short distance one sees only the details, at a greater distance only the whole figure. Yet a point can be easily found at which, by a simple voluntary movement of the attention, there is no difficulty in seeing now the whole figure and now the smaller forms of which it is composed. A picture is often seen representing the tomb of Napoleon. The tomb is surrounded by dark trees between which the bright heavens are visible as background. One can look a long time at this picture without noticing anything except the trees, but suddenly, on the attention being accidentally directed to the bright background, one sees the figure of Napoleon between the trees. This case shows us very distinctly the important part which attention plays. The same sensuous object can, solely by the interposition of attention, give rise to wholly different perceptions.

      If I strike a harmony, or chord, on this piano, by a mere effort of attention you can fix every tone of that harmony. You then hear most distinctly the fixed tone, and all the rest appear as a mere addition, altering only the quality, or acoustic color, of the primary tone. The effect of the same harmony is essentially modified if we direct our attention to different tones.

      Strike in succession two harmonies, for example, the two represented in the annexed diagram, and first fix by the attention the upper note e, afterwards the base e-a; in the two cases you will hear the same sequence of harmonies differently. In the first case, you have the impression as if the fixed tone remained unchanged and simply altered its timbre; in the second case, the whole acoustic agglomeration seems to fall sensibly in depth. There is an art of composition to guide the attention of the hearer. But there is also an art of hearing, which is not the gift of every person.

      

Fig. 9.

      The piano-player knows the remarkable effects obtained when one of the keys of a chord that is struck is let loose. Bar 1 played on the piano sounds almost like bar 2. The note which lies next to the key let loose resounds after its release as if it were freshly struck. The attention no longer occupied with the upper note is by that very fact insensibly led to the upper note.

      

Fig. 10.

      

      Any tolerably cultivated musical ear can perform the resolution of a harmony into its component parts. By much practice we can go even further. Then, every musical sound heretofore regarded as simple can be resolved into a subordinate succession of musical tones. For example, if I strike on the piano the note 1, (annexed diagram,) we shall hear, if we make the requisite effort of attention, besides the loud fundamental note the feebler, higher overtones, or harmonics, 2 … 7, that is, the octave, the twelfth, the double octave, and the third, the fifth, and the seventh of the double octave.

      

Fig. 11.

      The same is true of every musically available sound. Each yields, with varying degrees of intensity, besides its fundamental note, also the octave, the twelfth, the double octave, etc. The phenomenon is observable with special facility on the open and closed flue-pipes of organs. According, now, as certain overtones are more or less distinctly emphasised in a sound, the timbre of the sound changes—that peculiar quality of the sound by which we distinguish the music of the piano from that of the violin, the clarinet, etc.

      On the piano these overtones can be very easily rendered audible. If I strike, for example, sharply note 1 of the foregoing series, whilst I simply press down upon, one after another, the keys 2, 3, … 7, the notes 2, 3, … 7 will continue to sound after the striking of 1, because the strings corresponding to these notes, now freed from their dampers, are thrown into sympathetic vibration.

      As you know, this sympathetic vibration of the like-pitched strings with the overtones is really not to be conceived as sympathy, but rather as lifeless mechanical necessity. We must not think of this sympathetic vibration as an ingenious journalist pictured it, who tells a gruesome story of Beethoven's F minor sonata, Op. 2, that I cannot withhold from you. "At the last London Industrial Exhibition nineteen virtuosos played the F minor sonata on the same piano. When the twentieth stepped up to the instrument to play by way of variation the same production, to the terror of all present the piano began to render the sonata of its own accord. The Archbishop of Canterbury, who happened to be present, was set to work and forthwith expelled the F minor devil."

      Although, now, the overtones or harmonics which we have discussed are heard only upon a special effort of the attention, nevertheless they play a highly important part in the formation of musical timbre, as also in the production of the consonance and dissonance of sounds. This may strike you as singular. How can a thing which is heard only under exceptional circumstances be of importance generally for audition?

      But consider some familiar incidents of your every-day life. Think of how many things you see which you do not notice, which never strike your attention until they are missing. A friend calls upon you; you cannot understand why he looks so changed. Not until you make a close examination do you discover that his hair has been cut. It is not difficult to tell the publisher of a work from its letter-press, and yet no one can state precisely the points by which this style of type is so strikingly different from that style. I have often recognised a book which I was in search of from a simple piece of unprinted white paper that peeped out from underneath the heap of books covering it, and yet I had never carefully examined the paper, nor could I have stated its difference from other papers.

      What we must remember, therefore, is that every sound that is musically available yields, besides its fundamental note, its octave, its twelfth, its double octave, etc., as overtones or harmonics, and that these are important for the agreeable combination of several musical sounds.

      2) One other fact still remains to be dealt with. Look at this tuning-fork. It yields, when struck, a perfectly smooth tone. But if you strike in company with it a second fork which is of slightly different pitch, and which alone also gives a perfectly smooth tone, you will hear, if you set both forks on the table, or hold both before your ear, a uniform tone no longer, but a number of shocks of tones. The rapidity of the shocks increases with the difference of the pitch of the forks. These shocks, which become very disagreeable for the ear when they amount to thirty-three in a second, are called "beats."

      Always, when one of two like musical sounds is thrown out of unison with the other, beats arise. Their number increases with the divergence from unison, and simultaneously they grow more unpleasant. Their roughness reaches its maximum at about thirty-three beats in a second. On a still further departure from unison, and a consequent increase of the number of beats, the unpleasant effect is diminished, so that tones which are widely apart in pitch no longer produce offensive beats.

      To give yourselves a clear idea of the production of beats, take two metronomes and set them almost alike. You can, for that matter, set the two exactly alike. You need not fear that they will strike alike. The metronomes usually for sale in the shops are poor enough to yield, when set alike, appreciably unequal strokes. Set, now, these two metronomes, which strike at unequal intervals, in motion; you will readily see that their strokes alternately coincide and conflict with each other. The alternation is quicker the greater the difference of time of the two metronomes.

      If metronomes are not to be had, the experiment may be performed with two watches.