Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1875 — The Musical Ear. [ARTICLE]

The Musical Ear.

Prof. Helmholz, whose discoveries in the sound world are only comparable to the discoveries of Newton in the world of light, has put forth an ingenious theory, somewhat to this effect: “He discovered within the ear, and soaked in a sensitive fluid, rows and rows of microscopic nerves —several hundred in number—each of which, like the string of a piano-forte, he believed vibrated to some note; therefore, we were to infer that, just as a note sung outside a piano will set up in the corresponding wire a sympathetic vibration, so any sound or sounds in the outer world represented by a nerve-wire or nerves in the ear could be heard by the ear; and, as a consequence, I suppose, any absence of °t; or defect in, these internal nerve-wires would prevent us from hearing the sound as others better constituted would hear it. The next direct question of musical ear now becomes one of inherited tendency mid special training. The musical ear i's the ear that has learned—by constantly using the same intervals—to recognize the tones and semi-tones of the usual scale, and to regard all variation sos quarternotes as exceptions and subtleties not to be taken account of in the getneral construction of melody and hapnony. Now" bur octave, and our dlvkfcn of the octave into tones and semi-tones* is not artificial*

but natural, founded as much upon certain laws of sound-vibration as our notation (if I may so say) of colors is founded upon the laws of light-vibration. But although the selection of eighft notes yrith their semi-tones is the natural and scientific scale, seeing that the ear is capable of hearing impartially vast numbers of other vibrations of sound which produce vast numbers of other intervals, quarternotes, etc., what we have to do in training the musical ear is just to harp on the notes which compose the musical scale in various keys, and on these only; in this way the ear gets gradually weaned from sympathy with what is out of tune —ceases to be dog-like or savage-like, and becomes the cultured organ for recognizing the natural order and progression of those measured and related vibrations which we call musical sound. Of course a tendency like this can be inherited just as much as any other, and in almost all cases it can be improved and cultivated.