Mark Jerome Yeary

Music 251B
March 19, 2003

Einheitlichkeit: The Legacy of Carl Stumpf’s Theory of Tonal Fusion

Introduction

The late twentieth century witnessed growing research interest in aural psychology

following the pioneering work of Hermann von Helmholtz. In a field defined by Helmholtz’s

empirical research and basis in physiology, the research and writings of Carl Stumpf are

remarkable for their philosophically grounded approach. Stumpf’s work stands apart from that of

his contemporaries, basing his theories of tone psychology within the realm of human

perception.

Beginning with volume two of his seminal work Tonpsychologie (1890), Stumpf looks to

the perception of tones for the basis of musical consonance. Stumpf proposes a theory of tonal

fusion—Verschmelzung—that equates the sensation of consonance with the likelihood that the

listener hears two tones as a single entity. While Stumpf’s theory was ultimately an insufficient

account of musical consonance in practice, his work identifies three concepts that are explored

further in the 20th century: tonal fusion as an acoustic phenomenon, the separation of tonal

consonance and musical consonance, and the perceptual origins of musical consonance. This

paper will investigate 20th-century research in consonance and tonal fusion, noting the influence

of Stumpf’s concepts throughout.

Helmholtz and Dissonance Theory

In assessing the work of Stumpf, it is impossible to neglect the influence of Helmholtz’s

vast body of research. More than any other publication before it, Helmholtz’s 1863 Die Lehre

von den Tonempfindungen defined the field of psychoacoustics. Helmholtz’s look into “the

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sensations of tone” went beyond the study of acoustics, introducing the physiology of the human

hearing system, as well as a historical look at musical style, theory, and aesthetics.

One of Helmholtz’s goals in writing Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen was to provide

a physical explanation of tonality in Western music, in the tradition of Rameau. Helmholtz began

by examining the physiology of the hearing system, suggesting that particular frequencies elicit

sympathetic vibrations in the membranes of the ear. According to Helmholtz, consonance arises

from two sensory factors: the alignment of the upper partials of two or more tones, and the lack

of beats between these partials.

These two factors determine the frequencies of tones that form a consonant (or dissonant)

interval. The alignment of upper partials is greatest between two tones whose frequency ratios

yield simple integers, such as 3:2 (the fifth) or 5:4 (the major third). And the presence of beats

occurs when the upper partials of two tones are not aligned; two partials that significantly clash

cause the sensation of “roughness”, with maximum roughness occurring between two

frequencies that are 33 Hz apart.1

While Helmholtz defined acoustically based consonance with his “theory of beats”, he

further believed this theory underlies harmony as well; consonance and dissonance are in the

tones themselves, and are not defined through metaphysical or theoretical systems:

…I do not hesitate to assert that the preceding investigations,

founded upon a more exact analysis of the sensations of tone, and
upon purely scientific, as distinct from aesthetic principles, exhibit
the true and sufficient cause of consonance and dissonance in
music.2

1
Burdette Green and David Butler, “From Acoustics to Tonpsychologie,” in The Cambridge History of Western
Music Theory, ed. Thomas Christensen (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 2002), 260-261.
2
Hermann von Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone: As a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (1862), ed.
and trans. Alexander J. Ellis (New York: Dover, 1954), 194.

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Enter Stumpf

Stumpf’s concept of Tonpsychologie significantly shifts the focus of Helmholtz’s

theories. A student of the renowned Austrian philosopher Franz Brentano, Stumpf approached

the study of acoustics on Brentano’s model of emphasizing consciousness and the mental aspects

of experience. Helmholtz dealt with the perception of tone, based in the physiology of hearing.

Stumpf, by contrast, dealt with the apperception of tone, the mental acts of attending to and

referring to the objects of tone.

Stumpf's theory of consonance and dissonance rests not on the physical qualities of tone,

but on the manner in which listeners experience tones. Specifically, Stumpf challenged two

tenets of the Helmholtz theory of beats: the assertion that the upper partials of complex tones are

the source of consonance, and the suggestion that slightly mistuned intervals (and their

misaligned partials) result in a sharp dissonance. Stumpf found both of these to be contrary to

musical experience, recognizing the potential for pure tones to create dissonance without the

presence of upper partials, and hearing slightly mistuned intervals not as dissonances, but simply

as out-of-tune consonances.

The Concept of Verschmelzung

In describing the perception of consonance and dissonance, Stumpf proposed the concept

of tonal fusion—Verschmelzung (melting, blending)—as the basis for this distinction. Consonant

tones are tones that tend to fuse, resulting in the perception of a whole that is distinct from the

simple assembly of its components. Verschmelzung embraces two aspects of tone: the structural

properties present in the tones, and the cognitive act of hearing the two tones as a whole. For

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Stumpf, certain intervals are prone to tonal fusion, but the process of tonal fusion occurs within

the listener’s mind.3

Stumpf defined Verschmelzung in his 1898 article “Konsonanz und Dissonanz”:

Fusion is that relationship of two sense-perceived elements in

which they form not a mere sum but rather a whole. The result of
this relationship is that with greater levels of fusion the overall
impression, under otherwise identical circumstances, approaches
ever closer to one of a single perception, and becomes increasingly
difficult to break down.4

The concept of tonal fusion as source of consonance allowed Stumpf to overcome the

flaws he saw in the Helmholtz theory of beats. First, fusion is independent of the presence of

upper partials; an interval composed of pure (sinusoidal) tones exhibits the same levels of fusion

as do complex tones. Second, mistuned intervals can still be perceived as consonances, due to the

“reconstruction” of the interval in apperception.

To provide evidence for this concept of tonal fusion, Stumpf conducted an experiment in

which subjects with no musical training listened to sinusoidal tones, occurring either individually

or as a diatonic dyad. For each stimulus, the subject was asked if he or she heard one tone or two.

A false response, in which the subject mistakes a dyad for a single tone, represents tonal fusion.

Stumpf proposed that intervals prone to tonal fusion elicit a high percentage of such false

responses.

Stumpf’s original results are presented below5:

Interval Octave Fifth Fourth Third Tritone Second

% Error 75% 50% 33% 25% 20% 10%
3
Albrecht Schneider, “’Verschmelzung’, Tonal Fusion, and Consonance: Carl Stumpf Revisited,” in Marc Leman
(ed.), Music, Gestalt, and Computing: Studies in Cognitive and Systematic Musicology (Berlin, New York: Springer,
1997), 118-119.
4
Carl Stumpf, “Konsonanz und Dissonanz,” Beiträge zur Akustik und Musikwissenschaft 1 (1898), 107. Translated
in Lee Rothfarb, “Ernst Kurth’s Die Voraussetzungen der theoretischen Harmonik and the Beginnings of Music
Psychology,” Theoria 4 (1989), 21.
5
Willi Apel (ed.), Harvard Dictionary of Music (Cambridge: Harvard Univ., 1969), 202.

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These results allowed Stumpf to define degrees of consonance, based on the likelihood of

an interval’s tonal fusion. Stumpf’s experiment suggested that the likelihood of fusion

corresponds to the simple integer ratios that occur in Helmholtz’s research on consonance.

Stumpf concludes that likelihood of tonal fusion can be seen as an indicator of consonance, while

his use of pure sinusoidal tones allowed him to avoid the discrepancies he noted in the theory of

beats.

Stumpf did not propose that a fused interval is necessarily heard as one tone, though this

was a common misconception among his readers. This misconception led Stumpf to clarify his

definition in his later works dealing with fusion and consonance: an interval that is prone to

fusion is defined by its propensity to be heard as one tone, not the mandate that it be heard as one

tone. Stumpf specifically stated that uniformity (Einheitlichkeit) is not the same as unity

(Einheit).6

And yet it is this Einheitlichkeit that makes fusion an important concept, more than the

simple probability that two tones will be heard as one. Even after a fused interval is “broken

down” and its individual tone components analyzed, the quality of Verschmelzung remains in the

listener’s experience. Stumpf described this quality using a Gestalt concept7 of “wholeness” that

the mind imposes upon the interval; even though the tones can be recognized as separate entities,

the apperception of a highly consonant interval promotes the mental imagery of fusion.

6
Carl Stumpf, “Konsonanz und Konkordanz,” Beiträge zur Akustik und Musikwissenschaft 6 (1911), 118:
“Einheitlichkeit ist nicht Einheit.”
7
Though Stumpf is not generally associated with Gestalt concepts or principles, his academic lineage points to
obvious links; the three “original” Gestalt psychologists (Köhler, Koffka, and Wertheimer) studied under Stumpf at
the University of Berlin, and his application of Brentano’s philosophy of mental experience reflects the work of
another of Brentano’s students, Christian von Ehrenfels, who authored the seminal “Über Gestaltqualität” in 1890.

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From Consonance to Concordance

While tonal fusion provided Stumpf with a theory of consonance for dyads, this theory

did not describe the nature of consonant or dissonant chords, noting that “the degree of fusion of

two given tones is in no way influenced by the addition of a third or further tones.”8 Stumpf

realized that new laws are required to describe the nature of chords, laws with no basis in the

makeup of individual tones. To distinguish the structure of chords as distinct from dyadic

consonance, Stumpf defined concordance as the contextual “goodness of fit” of a chord within a

particular key. Thus, a triad that is concordant in one key, such as C major, may not be

concordant in relation to the key of F# major.

The concept of concordance is based on the juxtaposition of consonant intervals.

However, its existence is not dependent upon the perception of tonal fusion, but on the

relationship between the components of a chord and a fundamental key:

We call concordance that trait of the chord which brands it a

concord, that is, its construction is according to the principle of the
maximum quantity of tones with the octave, [arranged] in
ascending order according to the degrees of consonance, [which
are] consonant with the fundamental.9

In proposing concordance along side consonance, Stumpf recognized additional

relationships beyond consonance, those that occur specifically within the concept of tonality. If

consonance was defined a function of immediate sensation and apperception, then concordance

was defined as being dependent upon relational thinking, residing in the listener’s mental

representation of the chord as a whole.10

8
Carl Stumpf, Tonpsychologie 2 (1890), 136. Translated in Rothfarb, “Ernst Kurth’s Die Voraussetzungen,” Theoria
4 (1989), 26.
9
Carl Stumpf, “Konsonanz und Konkordanz,” Beiträge zur Akustik und Musikwissenschaft 6 (1911), 134.
Translated in Rothfarb, “Ernst Kurth’s Die Voraussetzungen,” Theoria 4 (1989), 23.
10
Schneider, “’Verschmelzung’,” 123.

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With the creation of concordance, Stumpf distinguished the two types of tone perception:

the intervallic relationship that Stumpf found in fusion (labeled Konsonanzempfindung), and the

harmonic relationship, based on concordance (Harmoniegefühl). Stumpf was not the first to

codify the distinction between these two phenomena; Alexandre Étienne Choron and J. Adrien

de la Fage made this distinction in their Nouveau Manuel Complet de Musique (1836-1839),

calling the first “euphonie” and the second “dynamie,” and Wilhelm Wundt, the preeminent

psychologist of his time and a later critic of Stumpf’s methodology, noted the difference between

“Konsonanz” and “Harmonie”. By 1920, many music theorists had come to recognize the two

types of consonance as separate and only marginally related, each generating terms to

differentiate the two.11

Early Reception of Stumpf’s Work

While Stumpf’s results corresponded fairly well with contemporary understanding of

consonance and dissonance, he was still at a loss regarding the phenomenology of

Verschmelzung. In his later works, notably Die Sprachlaute (1926), Stumpf expressed

uncertainty about Verschmelzung as the cause of consonance and dissonance; instead, he saw

both Verschmelzung and consonance as consequences of inherent tonal relationships that

promote these mental phenomena.12 In essence, Stumpf came to support a position that, if not in

full agreement with Helmholtz, at least had its basis in the same realm of acoustics and tone

physiology.

In as much as Stumpf’s goal was to locate the origins of consonance, his theory of fusion

was seen as a failure, regardless of the concepts that resulted from his experiments. The

11
Norman Cazden, “The Definition of Consonance and Dissonance,” International Review of the Aesthetics and
Sociology of Music 11 (1980), 150-151.

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reception of his work was particularly tempered by this unachieved goal. Research on

consonance and dissonance in the 1920s and 1930s paid little attention to tonal fusion; Carroll C.

Pratt dismissed Stumpf’s concept of fusion as unclear, and psychologist Edwin Boring (1942)

sums up Stumpf’s fusion theory as a relic of “the cult of expert introspective observation.”13

Ernst Kurth offered a more favorable reception of Stumpf’s work in his 1913 Die

Voraussetzungen der theoretischen Harmonik. Assuming that fusion is the basis for consonance,

Kurth noted that Stumpf relied upon the feedback of untrained listeners to judge the level of

fusion. Musically trained listeners, who are not as likely to judge two tones as fused, would

likely hear a greater number of intervals as dissonant. But this contradicts Western musical

practice, with the use of the so-called “imperfect” consonances (thirds and sixths) that are not

prone to tonal fusion. Thus, fusion cannot be the basis for consonance; Kurth wrote “from the

psychological standpoint, the entire theory of fusion does not go beyond a mere verification of

phenomena to an explanation of them.”14

However, Kurth did not disregard the concept of fusion as a listening phenomenon,

drawing a conclusion that evokes Stumpf’s work with concordance: “the concept of fusion

contains two interpretations, which are best distinguished as passive and active fusion.”15 Passive

fusion refers to the psychological relationship of an interval, while active fusion (or fusibility)

defines the specifically musical behavior of an interval.

12
Schneider, “’Verschmelzung’,” 122-123.
13
Edwin Boring, Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology (New York: Appleton-
Century, 1942), 362.
14
Ernst Kurth, Die Voraussetzungen der theoretischen Harmonik (1913), translated in Rothfarb, “Ernst Kurth’s Die
Voraussetzungen,” 25.
15
Ibid., 26.

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Concurrent Studies on Tonal Consonance

By 1920, a number of prominent music theorists had come to recognize the distinction

between tonal consonance and musical consonance. This distinction was slower to reach the field

of acoustic research, though several studies in the 1920s led their authors to the same conclusions

as Stumpf and his musical compatriots. Gradually, research in the general notion of

“consonance” gives way to the study of psychoacoustics and the mechanics of hearing. However,

two further consonance studies would later prove valuable in the definition of tonal consonance,

the research of Mayer (1894) and Kaestner (1909).

Mayer’s research dealt exclusively with pure sinusoidal tone intervals, asking listeners to

identify the smallest possible interval that does not exhibit roughness or dissonance. Mayer noted

that, in contrast to Helmholtz’s theory of beats, the interval of smallest tonal consonance does

not follow a regular (logarithmic) frequency pattern.16

Kaestner’s study compared complex tone intervals with pure tone intervals. Asking

untrained listeners to rate intervals by pleasantness, Kaestner found that the pleasance of

complex tone intervals correlate strongly with low integer ratios (4:5, 3:4, 2:3, 5:8, 3:5), while

other intervals are much less likely to be judged pleasant. In contrast, pure tone intervals exhibit

a much flatter response, where integer ratio intervals are not significantly more pleasant than

others.17

The Critical Bandwidth Theory of Tonal Consonance

Following Kaestner’s 1909 work, the study of tonal consonance in the tradition of

Helmholtz did not see significant development until the study of the human auditory system, as

16
David Huron, “Tone and Voice: A Derivation of the Rules of Voice-Leading from Perceptual Principles,” Music
Perception 19 (2001), 15.

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pioneered by Nobel Prize winner Georg von Békésy in the 1940s. Békésy examined the manner

in which different frequencies are physically represented in the human hearing system,

specifically studying the displacement of the basilar membrane of the cochlea. Noting that low

and high frequencies cause displacement in different regions of the membrane, Békésy began to

map out the correspondence between frequency and displacement.18

At roughly the same time as Békésy’s work, Harvey Fletcher conducted studies on

auditory masking, the phenomenon of sensory interference that occurs when a subject hears

multiple tones. Fletcher later integrated Békésy’s basilar membrane mapping to suggest that the

behavior of the basilar membrane is responsible for auditory masking, using the term critical

band to refer to the regions of frequencies in which masking can occur.19

Donald Greenwood introduced the work of Fletcher and Békésy to the perception of tonal

consonance and dissonance—Greenwood used the term “sensory dissonance”. Drawing upon

Mayer’s 1894 study of smallest possible consonant pure-tone intervals, Greenwood compared

Mayer’s results with the critical bandwidth studies begun by Fletcher, finding an excellent

correlation between the two.20

Plomp and Levelt extended Greenwood’s work in their widely referenced 1965 study,

“Tonal Consonance and Critical Bandwidth.” Working with a well-defined map of the critical

bands of hearing, Plomp and Levelt drew upon the research of Mayer and Kaestner to investigate

the various hypotheses regarding tonal (acoustic) consonance. Their results confirmed

Helmholtz’s theory of beats as the source of roughness and tonal dissonance, but the transition

17
R. Plomp and W. J. M. Levelt, “Tonal Consonance and Critical Bandwidth,” Journal of the Acoustic Society of
America 38 (1965), 551-552.
18
Huron, “Tone and Voice,” 14.
19
Ibid., 14-15.
20
Ibid., 15-16.

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between consonant and dissonant intervals is found in the frequencies of the tones, and their

relation to the associated critical bandwidth. Specifically, maximum tonal dissonance occurs

when the tones of an interval span approximately 25% of the critical bandwidth.21

According to Plomp and Levelt, complex tones operate on the same principle of critical

bandwidth, as applied to all audible partials of the tones. When two complex tones form a simple

integer ratio interval, the partials of these tones tend to match up evenly, providing little or no

tonal dissonance; consequently, complex tones that do not form a simple integer ratio are likely

to have partials that fall within the dissonance range stated above, creating degrees of roughness

(tonal dissonance) even when the fundamental tones lie in different critical bandwidths.22

Tonal Fusion Revisited

As the critical bandwidth theory of tonal consonance was developing in the wake of

Plomp and Levelt’s research, Lucinda DeWitt and Robert Crowder looked back to Stumpf’s

tonal fusion experiments for their 1987 work on fusion and tonal consonance. DeWitt and

Crowder were originally drawn to Stumpf’s tonal fusion experiments because of their reliance

upon nonverbal cues, providing a more objective metric: instead of making judgments on the

pleasantness or consonance of an interval, the listener is simply asked how many tones he or she

can hear.23

DeWitt and Crowder expanded and improved upon Stumpf’s research methods in several

areas: trained and untrained listeners were subject to the same tests, mean response time was

measured along with percent errors (error representing two tones heard as one), and in some tests

21
Plomp and Levelt, “Tonal Consonance and Critical Bandwidth,” 560.
22
Ibid., 556.
23
Lucinda DeWitt and Robert Crowder, “Tonal Fusion of Consonant Musical Intervals: The Oomph in Stumpf,”
Perception and Psychophysics 41 (1987), 73.

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a third reference (or “warning”) tone was introduced.24 Results showed that tonal fusion occurs

most frequently with the first two intervals of the harmonic series, the octave and the fifth.

Varied results on the interval of the fourth suggested that it may be fused in certain

environments, but not as strongly as the octave or fifth. DeWitt and Crowder suggested that

fusion might be seen as a tendency for an interval to be interpreted as partials of a single

fundamental tone, rather than as two separate tones. But more importantly to DeWitt and

Crowder, tonal fusion was brought under the scrutiny of empirical psychological research, and a

concept that had been spawned from Stumpf’s musical intuition was shown to have a measure of

objective value.25

Tonal Fusion and Auditory Streams

The work of DeWitt and Crowder appeared three years before Albert Bregman’s

Auditory Scene Analysis, a landmark work that integrated psychoacoustics and sound perception

with critical bandwidth theory and the physiology of hearing. Bregman’s book addressed the

phenomenon of an “auditory stream”, an analogy that describes how we perceive a series or

cluster of sounds that share common qualities. Multiple auditory streams can be segregated

through the manipulation of auditory qualities, such as the Baroque technique of “bouncing”

between two melodies on one instrument, which gives the auditory illusion that the instrument is

playing two separate melodies.

While Bregman primarily dealt with tonal consonance, Auditory Scene Analysis made a

number of references to musical dissonance and its basis in tonal (acoustic) phenomena. In

detailing the critical bandwidth theory as the physical cause of tonal consonance and dissonance,

24
Ibid., 74-75.
25
Ibid., 84.

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Bregman noted that the fusion of tonally consonant intervals contributes to the perception of the

chord, as separate from the perception of individual tones. Fusion works to “confuse” the process

of scene analysis, resulting in a single auditory stream—Stumpf’s Einheitlichkeit revisited.26

Bregman suggested that there are two independent characteristics of auditory perception

at work in the hearing of an interval or chord: psychoacoustic (tonal) consonance and

dissonance, and fusion. In a twist on Stumpf’s original proposal that fusion causes (musical)

consonance, Bregman found that the perception of psychoacoustic dissonance could be

suppressed when auditory streams are not fused. Furthermore, there are a number of factors, such

as onset time and timbre, which work to prevent or enforce the fusion of auditory streams.27

Hence, it is possible to have an interval that is musically dissonant, such as a minor second, that

avoids psychoacoustic dissonance by avoiding fusion—playing the interval on different

instruments, or differing the onset time and duration of the two tones.

Modern Uses of Tonal Fusion and Tonal Consonance

While Bregman’s Auditory Scene Analysis extended the concept of fusion into the realm

of psychoacoustics, tonal fusion has also been integrated into the language of modern music

theory and music perception. In examining the role of perceptual principles in the formation of

voice-leading rules, David Huron defined tonal fusion in musical context:

The perceptual independence of concurrent tones is weakened

when their pitch relations promote tonal fusion. Intervals that
promote tonal fusion include (in decreasing order): unisons,
octaves, and perfect fifths. Where the goal is the perceptual
independence of concurrent sounds, intervals ought to be shunned

26
Albert S. Bregman, Auditory Scene Analysis (1990), 507.
27
Ibid., 509-510.

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in direct proportion to the degree to which they promote tonal

fusion.28

Huron used the concept of tonal fusion in suggesting a method of polyphonic

composition. In striving to maintain the independence of voices, intervals that are prone to tonal

fusion (unison, octave, fifth) should be avoided when possible. Additionally, voices should

maintain tonal consonance, avoiding the intervals that Plomp and Levelt have shown to exhibit

the least amount of tonal consonance: seconds, sevenths, and their octave equivalents.29

Having established the goals of a hypothetical composer—avoid tonal fusion, avoid tonal

dissonance—Huron analyzed the intervallic makeup of J. S. Bach’s two-part keyboard

inventions and three-part Sinfonias. Providing four sets of analysis (one for the inventions, one

for each two-voice permutation in the Sinfonias), Huron shows that Bach’s keyboard works are

governed roughly equally by these two goals.30

Tonal Fusion as Early Musical Consonance

Returning to Stumpf’s initial work on tonal fusion as the basis for consonance, Stumpf

showed that the octave and fifth have the greatest tendencies toward fusion; this is confirmed and

refined in DeWitt and Crowder’s research, where only the octave and fifth are shown to exhibit

strong fusion tendencies. While these results are not able to account for the modern musical

definition of consonance, they match up nicely with the origins of consonance: plainchant

polyphony.

In tracing the evolution of consonance from the 9th to 13th centuries, James Tenney noted

the similarity between Stumpf’s definition of tonal fusion and the medieval concept of

28
Huron, “Tone and Voice,” 19.
29
David Huron, “Tonal Consonance versus Tonal Fusion in Polyphonic Sonorities,” Music Perception 9 (1991),
139.
30
Ibid., 153.

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consonance. In the early 14th century, Jacobus of Liege wrote on the (recent past) tradition of

discant; noting that “discant is called the consonance of distinct melodies,” Jacobus defines this

consonance of discant as follows: “not all distinct melodies mixed together will produce discant;

but those which concord with each other become, by virtue of their concord, like one melody.”31

Numerous references to consonance in discant refer to the experience of two voices

sounding “like one melody” or “like one sound.” Compare this to Stumpf’s description of

Verschmelzung in “Konsonanz und Dissonanz”: “The combined sound of two tones

approximates—now more, now less—the impression of a single tone.”32

Medieval consonance as described by Jacobus of Liege refers to the historical origins of

polyphony, in its desire to amplify and intensify the plainchant melody without detracting from

the chant. As the tradition of discant gave way to the independence of multiple voices, there was

no longer a need for voices to sound “like one melody,” allowing the use of the so-called

“imperfect consonances” of thirds and sixths. And though the term “consonance” has continued

to represent the musical practice of acceptable intervals between voices, the nature of

consonance has changed from the experience of tonal fusion to the perception of separate voices

in accord.

Conclusion

Over a century after Stumpf’s initial work on Tonpsychologie, his legacy lies not in the

results of his research, but in his belief in human perception as the basis of musical phenomena.

Stumpf’s work appeared in the era of empirical tone research, seeking the origins of the defined

concept of consonance within the physical nature of sound. By focusing on the listener’s

31
Jacobus Leodiensis, Speculum musicae, as quoted in Jamey Tenney, A History of ‘Consonance’ and ‘Dissonance’,
28.

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intuition of musical relationships, Stumpf reintroduced the rational, human element to auditory

research, reminding modern scholars that the ultimate authority on the musical experience lies

not within the tone, but within the listener.

32
Stumpf, “Konsonanz und Dissonanz,” as quoted in Tenney, ‘Consonance’ and ‘Dissonance’, 30.

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Tenney, James. A History of ‘Consonance’ and ‘Dissonance’. New York: Excelsior, 1988.

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