THE SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION OF HARMONICS - COINING THE TERM "ACOUSTICS"

SAUVEUR, (JOSEPH).

Systeme général des Intervalles des Sons, & son Application à tous les Systèmes & à tous les Instrumens de Musique. Par M. Sauveur.

Paris, Jean Boudot, 1704.

4to. Without wrappers. Extracted from "Mémoires de l'Academie des Sciences. Année 1701". Title-page to Année 1701 with an engraved vignette. Pp. 297-364 a. Corrections & Remarques Pour le Systeme de Musique (2) pp. With 3 large folded engraved plates. A few scattered brownspots. Wide-margined.

First appearance of a founding paper in musical theory and the physics of acoustics, in which the term "acoustique" is coined. The paper deals with the relations of the tones of the musical scale. It established the practice of music upon a science superior to it which Sauveur calls "Acoustics", the subject of which is sound in general. This is Sauveur's main paper on acoustics in which he states the first clear recognition of the composite nature of the vibration of strings.

"Like Mersenne and others in the Seventeenth century, Sauveur used musical experience to obtain information on sound and vibration. According to Fontenelle, Sauveur was fascinated by music, even though he had no ear for it, and consulted frequently with musicians. Despite the musical foundation of his work, Sauveur proposed the development of a new subject, which he named "acoustique", dealing with sound in general rather than with the "son agréable" of music." (DSB XII, p. 127).

"Joseph Sauveur (1653-1716) introduces the term "acoustics" for the study of sound and examines the relations of the tones of the musical scale in the memoir "Systeme général des intervalles...." (General System of sound intervals and its application to all musical systems and instruments) - the paper offered - He shows that a string can vibrate at integral multiples of a a fundamental frequency simultaneously with vibrating at the fundamental frequency itself, callinf the toned produced by the vibrations at the multiples the "harmonics" of the fundamental tone."(Parkinson "Breakthroughs" 1701 P.

Order-nr.: 44381