Listening to Timbre during the French Enlightenment

Cornelia Fales, Department of Ethnomusicology, Indiana University, US

cfales@indiana.edu

Proceedings of the Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM05)

Actes du Colloque interdisciplinaire de musicologie (CIM05)
Montral (Qubec) Canada, 10-12/03/2005

Abstract
The word and even the concept timbre did not enter common parlance in the sense of sound
quality until nearly the end of the eighteenth century. Many writings of the seventeenth
century and eighteenth century wrestled with concepts like the unison, consonance, and
issues of harmonic theory, to arrive at conclusions that, I argue, were often timbrally-induced,
but misattributed to the parameters of pitch or loudness. This paper reviews the writings of
Mersenne, Rameau, and others for evidence that discussions of consonance and harmony
often led them very close to intuitive recognition of the role of overtones in timbre. In
particular, I propose that though neither Mersenne nor Rameau had the language or
conceptual structure to consider timbre as it shaped their respective theories, the writings of
both often suggest the influence of fused rather than pitched overtones. Finally, I argue that
beginning with Mersenne and more deliberately with Rameau, understanding of differences in
auditory perception began to change from the traditional notion of variable auditory acuity to
a recognition of auditory flexibility, and that this transformation was a direct result of their
work with overtones.

Introduction
In 1716, Philippe de la Hires tried to parse a sound into sensations for which he had clear experiential
evidence but no descriptive vocabulary:
On doit distinguer le Son que se forme par la rencontre de deux corps sonores qui se choquent davec le
ton quil a en le comparant un autre ton de la mme nature.
One must distinguish the sound which is formed by the encounter of two sonorous bodies which clash
from the pitch that it has in comparison to another pitch of the same nature.

While de la Hires work on sound is remembered primarily for its garbled language, it should be
celebrated as one of the earliest recorded efforts to distinguish pitch from timbre.
The French word timbre went through a number of transformations before approaching the definition
currently in use. According to the Dictionnaire de lAcadmie Franaise, until well into the 17th century
tymbre designated a clapperless bell that was struck from the outside with a hammer, like the bell on
an alarm clock; by the fifth edition of the Dictionnaire at the end of the 18th century, it retained the
meaning of bell, but also referred to the sound that the bell makes. In the second half of the century,
tymbre began to appear in nearly its modern sense, but only as applied to the quality of a human
voice: a voice was capable of various timbres, or none at all if it were without a pleasing resonance. In
the 6th edition of the Dictionnaire, the definition detoured to include the leather cord that secures the
skin or head of a drum. Not even this edition, published in 1835, referred to the abstract sense of
timbre as tone quality. On the other hand, the S-volume of Diderots Encyclopdie1 published in late
1765, the term timbre began to appear in its modern sense, and both the T-volume of the
Encyclopdie and Rousseaus Dictionnaire de Musique included his articles on tymbre where it was
defined as that quality of sound by which it is sharp or sweet, soft or brilliant. The two articles were
identical, except that the Dictionnaire noted in addition that it had this meaning only by metaphor,
presumably referring to its original meaning of bell. William Warings English translation (1779) of
Rousseaus Dictionnaire leaves the term out altogether.
Assuming the Dictionnaire de lAcadmie Franaise reflects more popular usage than either Diderots
Encyclopdie or Rousseaus Dictionnaire de Musique, there seems to have been no word in common
parlance representing the concept of timbre throughout much of the 17th and 18th centuries. How then
did people talk and think about timbre at that time? While it is unlikely that seventeenth and
eighteenth-century listeners made use of timbral information any less efficiently than modern

1
Formally known as Encyclopdie ou Dictionnaire Raisonn des Sciences, des Arts et des Mtiers.

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listeners, writings of the period suggest that, in conscious reflection on sound, listeners conflated the
parameter of timbre with other qualities and senses. In particular, I want to claim two things in this
paper: 1) that writings on the subjects of overtones and consonance offered a kind of locus point for
discussions of timbre, a parameter that lacked its own identifying schema, had no descriptive
vocabulary, and was only vaguely delineated from other sensations; and 2) that to the extent that
18th century thinkers became aware of overtones before they were aware of timbre, it was necessary
that they come to terms intellectually with the notion of variable listening before the relationship of
overtones to timbre could be discovered.

Hearing Overtones
Historians of science are regularly confronted with the mystery of discovery. H.F. Cohen describes the
Scientific Revolution as a strange perceptual phenomenon:
All over Europe something was in the air. Independently of one another, both greater and lesser
thinkers began to see things that had gone unnoticed for ages. Tycho Brahe recognized a nova in the
sky where no scholar for centuries had seen one because such phenomena were ruled out a priori by the
reigning philosophy. A telescope was suddenly constructed out of parts and by means of tools which had
been lying ready for centuries.Marin Mersenne discovered, without employing any tools or tricks, the
presence of harmonics never distinguished before in your everyday musical note (Cohen, p. 522).

And yet we know that others had heard overtones. As early as the third century BCE, Aristotle
mentions higher pitches contained within the basic pitch of a tone; Aristoxenus as well mentions the
phenomenon, and others throughout the next five centuries including Newton and Descartes make
reference to what appear to be harmonic overtones. But these references are more tantalizing than
informative. Writers are naturally unsure as to the physical mechanisms responsible for what they are
hearing, but they also appear to be wary of their very perception: they think they hear a higher pitch,
they think its an octave or maybe a fifth higher than the real tone, they think all that while also
thinking that maybe they hear nothing at all. Its not that they are uncertain as to what they are
hearing, but rather as to whether they are engaged in an act of perception or not. What was
exceptional about Mersennes response to overtones was that he took them seriously or rather, he
took his own experience of them seriously, formally acknowledging them as precedent for other
listeners.
Though Mersenne wrote insightfully on overtones, his work never reached a broad audience, fading
into obscurity to be rediscovered at the beginning of the 18th century. In March of 1701, Joseph
Sauveur delivered a formal presentation to the Paris Acadmie Royale des Sciences in which he
documented the existence of overtones, their pitches, and the likely mechanism of their production
from a vibrating string. The news of overtones took off among the Paris intelligentia, for whom
scientific discovery was as much a trend as art or fashion. Through the first quarter of the century,
scientific, philosophical, and popular reaction to the existence of overtones fell roughly into three
categories. For some listeners, the news of overtones was truly disturbing, as those who were proud
of ear were suddenly confronted with an external reality to which they were deaf before. For
example, Diderots early essay on acoustics, otherwise staid and precise, begins like this:
Whom will I take as guide? Whom can I rely on? On you? On myself? It is on him who, well informed as
to the location of the object [of perception] is unlikely to deceive himself as to its nature; one, who has a
pure ear, who enjoys a healthy mind, in which the image of objects is not defigured by his senses
(17xx, p. 232).

A second category of listeners seems to have found the news of Sauveurs discovery eminently
forgettable. For them, the reality of overtones was tenable only to the extent that they found the
source of the news reliable, since they apparently never heard the sons delicats, either before or
after the report of their existence. More than a few in this category denied overtones altogether,
claiming their hearing as acute as anyone elses: if they couldnt hear the small sounds, then there
was nothing to hear. The critic E.C. Frron, for example, apparently believed that allegations of
overtones were part of a massive hoax, perpetrated by Rameau:
Can it really be that we hear three sounds every time we hear one? Nobody before M. Rameau has ever
noticed such a thing. It must be a phenomenon which does not exist in nature except for the ears of
musicians... it is therefore neither widespread nor real; it exists only for M. Rameau and a few equally
scholarly ears... (quoted in Jacobi, Vol. III, p. XLVII)

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A third group of listeners found the announcement of overtones more corroborating than surprising,
and accepted the miraculous sounds into their worldviews with little problem. Since they had heard
the vague sounds with more or less clarity for a long time, they were unalarmed by the variable
reports of their ears. The most notable member of this category was Rameau, who believed fervently
in the influence of overtones on his perception and composition of music long before he even knew
they existed. In particular, he regarded the fundamental bass of his harmonic system to be intuitively
understood, derived as it is from the overtone series:
I have finally succeeded, if Im not mistaken, in being able to demonstrate this principle of harmony,
which had already been suggested only by the path of experience, this fundamental bass, the unique
compass of the ear, this invisible guide of the musician, which always guided him in all his productions,
without being perceived, but which had no sooner been mentioned, than he regarded it as his own
belonging; I already knew this fundamental bass, he said; however, if he had examined himself well, he
would have said simply, I felt it: it is effectively one of these natural feelings about which one can easily
not think, but which is revealed in us the moment we are reminded of it (Gneration, p. iii).

Given the progress in acoustics at the end of the Enlightenment, it is a bit amazing that 18th century
scientists failed to connect harmonic overtones more specifically with the parameter of timbre. The
possibility that multiple harmonics might blend into the sensation of timbre seems no more awkward
in conception than other discoveries of the era the principle of super-position, for example.
Furthermore, a process in the visual domain analogous to the auditory blending of fusion of harmonics
had been established in Newtons Opticks with his mixture of colored light.
For most of the mathematicians investigating the acoustics of vibrating strings, the precise sensation
produced by the vibrations was relatively unimportant, except insofar as it confirmed their calculated
results. Though presumably the controversy over how a single string could produce multiple pitches
was sparked by the actual experience of overtones, it quickly became a problem of mathematics.
Since science in the 18th century was defined even then by cumulative progress, the reports of
Mersenne and Sauveur were sufficient evidence of the specified tones that the actual experience of
pitch was unnecessary. It was a period during which the news of a discovery was enough to put the
results of the discovery to work in new contexts. And it was also a time when the implications of the
subjective-objective divide were only beginning to surface in formal research, so acoustic and
perceptual phenomena were linguistically, if not conceptually elided in treatises of all kinds. Thus,
scientists following Sauveur accepted not only his experimental results in acoustics, but also the
perceptual correlate of those results the sensation of pitch because it was assumed self-evident
given confirmed results. Whether valid or not, the perceived sensation of pitch was consistently
described as part of each succeeding experiment, though only the acoustics were on trial.
A suspicious mind, in fact, might envision a kind of emperors clothes phenomenon with scientists at
work on the physics of a perceived phenomenon they had never verified experientially. There is
considerable, if speculative, evidence that even among the scientists who did listen for the overtones,
more than one was unable to hear them: after all, to find the triad of pitches so critical to Rameau
meant hearing up to the fifth harmonic. Joseph Sauveur was notoriously deaf, relying on assistants to
hear for him the phenomena he needed to describe. In 1745, Euler and Lagrange admitted to each
other not hearing anything like the overtones described by Rameau and others, agreeing privately that
the alleged tones were the sympathetic resonance of neighbouring strings; yet neither mathematician
stopped working on the problem of multiple vibrations. Bernoulli, who finally settled the vibrating
string debate, wondered a little plaintively in regard to overtones, if for hearing it is not required that
the tympanum [of the ear] be tuned to the sound perceived (quoted in Truesdale, p. 154), meaning
that since the ear is not a manipulable organ only those born with appropriately tuned ears could
hear the overtones. Diderot indicated some difficulty in hearing overtones correctly in his Principes
gnraux de la science du son (1748), d'Alembert admitted to deferring to the ear of Rameau
(Discours prliminaire (Ency), p. xx), and Rameau himself wondered in the Mmoires Opra how he
could have been unaware of the presence of overtones for the first 30 years of his life. So, an
idiosyncrasy of the era was that direct experience of a phenomenon was unnecessary for sustained
work on its mechanics. And an irony of the era was that after a long history of commentators who
heard overtones without considering them seriously, the 18th century if these suspicions have merit
produced notable scientists who considered overtones seriously, though unable to hear them.
Of course, to the extent that listeners like Frron, Euler, and Lagrange were unable to hear overtones,
they were hearing timbre instead. The difference between hearing overtones as pitched and hearing
them as they contribute to timbre is a matter of perceptual grouping, and thus subject to the same

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perceptual distinctions that occur in other reversible auditory figures. But that a natural phenomenon
like sound could provoke two equally valid percepts would have been unthinkable to enlightenment
philosophes. Thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries were accustomed to differences in auditory acuity.
Listeners of all eras have observed each other to conclude that some hear more acutely than others,
just as certain animals were known to be sensitive to sounds imperceptible to human ears. But the
epistemology of the 17th and 18th centuries did not easily accommodate notions of modes of
perception. Hearing was a more-or-less direct process of gathering auditory information from the
environment, and if two listeners heard different sounds in the same context, then one of them was
either hard of hearing or suffering delusion.
One of the results of disregarding the subjective-objective distinction or more precisely, the three
domains of production, acoustics, and perception was that insights into related phenomena that
occurred most prominently in different domains often proceeded side-by-side with no connection
between them. Another source of confusion was the conflation of the musical levels of a chord
composed of individual tones with a tone composed of individual overtones. In both cases the
component tones were called harmoniques, and any collection of harmonic overtones sharing a
fundamental were referred to most frequently as harmonie, accord (chord), or symphonie. The effect
of these imprecisions both linguistic and conceptual is evident in Volume XV of the Encyclopdie,
published in 1765 when the notion of timbre in its modern sense first began to make an appearance in
specialized tracts. Here, Rousseaus article on sound included this:
As for the difference which is found between sounds by the quality of timbre, it is evident that it results
neither from the degree of lowness [pitch], nor even from that of loudness. An oboe will in vain be put
exactly in unison with a flute, it will be useless to reduce the sound to the same degree, the sound of the
flute will always have je ne sais quoi of softness and mellowness, that of the oboe je ne sais quoi of
dryness and bitterness, which prevents one from ever confusing them. However, no one that I know has
ever examined this part, which perhaps, as much as the others, is found to have its difficulties: for the
quality of timbre depends neither on the number of vibrations which make the degree of high or low, nor
on the largeness or the force of these same vibrations which make the degree of loud or soft. It will be
necessary therefore to find in the corps sonores a third modification different from these two to explain
this last property; a project which doesnt seem to me too easy a thing... (XV:346)

Meanwhile in the same volume, Diderots article on sensation employed the distinction between clear
and confused ideas, an adaptation from the writings of Leibniz and Descartes that claimed ordinary
coherent percepts to result from a mixture of more elementary, confusedly perceived sensations. Just
as Newton discovered the role of composite colors, says Diderot, so the eighteenth century has
discovered the role of overtones in sound.
It is the same with tones in music. Two or several tones of a certain kind coming to hit the ear at the
same time, produce a chord: a fine ear perceives these different tones all at once, without distinguishing
them well; they unite together and melt together in one another; it is not properly any of these two
tones that one hears; it is an agreeable mix which is made of the two, from which results a third
sensation which is called chord, symphony: a man who will have never heard these tones separately, will
take the sensation which results from their chord for a simple perception. This will not be true, however,
any more than the color violet which results from red and blue mixed on a surface by small equal
portions. All sensation, that of the tone, for example, or of light in general, however simple, however
indivisible it seems to us, is a composite of ideas, an assemblage or mass of little perceptions that follow
in our minds so rapidly and of which each pauses there so briefly, or which appears there all at once in
so great a number, that the mind, unable to distinguish one from the other, has of this composite only a
single, very confused perception, in regard to the little parts or perceptions which form this composite
(XV:35).
Thus, a single volume of the Encyclopdie includes articles neither of which present material
unknown to the author of the other that together describe perceived and acoustic aspects of timbre,
without ever suspecting that they are both discussing the same phenomenon.

Mersenne and Rameau

Backtracking a bit, one can trace the epistemological challenge of perceived timbre. The writings of
both Mersenne and Rameau show them to have had sharp and refined ears and a gift for auditory
introspection, which at times brought them practical insights that shaped their advice to musicians,
but were too radical for overt statements of theory. For example, when Mersenne tells listeners how to
hear overtones, he says:

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Now it is necessary to choose a great silence to perceive them, even though it is no longer necessary
when one has an accustomed ear: and if the musicians dont hear them as soon as they touch some
chord of a lute, of a viol, or of another instrument, as happens to many players of the lute, who are so
expectant of and preoccupied with the natural sounds of the string, that there is (it seems) no more
place in their common sense, or in their imagination to receive the idea or the species of these small
delicate sounds, it is necessary that they have patience, or that, at night, they take a Bass Viol, of which
they play the sixth, fifth, or fourth string, and that they make themselves greatly attentive, for it is
difficult for them to play so delicately with the bow, that they hear several sounds at the same time
(Harmonie, Instruments, Bk IV, prop. IX, p. 267).

It is significant that Mersenne does not say that lute players have dull ears that are deaf to overtones,
but rather that their their minds are unreceptive: the delicate sounds cannot compete with the
predisposition of listeners to hear the predominant tone, and there is no space in their common sense
for both. The accepted understanding of harmonic overtones was that they were subsidiary to and
much softer than the main tone. Common metaphors of the era for sounds of unequal volume
generally revolved around the idea of struggle and ascendancy, one sound defeating or overpowering
the other. In Mersennes description on the other hand, concurrent perceptual possibilities do not
compete for dominance one over the other, but rather for a place in the spotlight of the listeners
attention. If the listener prejudices the competition by expecting the natural sound he always hears,
the overtones will lose the contest and remain inaudible; if he foregoes his auditory habits, if he in
effect excludes the natural sound from the space of his attention, the overtones have a better chance
to move in, take up residence, and be heard. Where other discussions on hearing overtones focus on
the sounds and their relative strength, Mersenne focuses here and elsewhere squarely on the listener.
Furthermore, its clear that he's noticed that he hears only one percept at a time either overtones or
timbre but not both at once. This must be one of the earliest statements of exclusive allocation ever
written. You cant hear overtones, Mersenne says in effect, until you stop hearing timbre.
Many eighteenth century scientific and theoretical treatises on harmony began with instructions on
how best to hear the overtones on which the rest of the tract was based. Sauveur suggested listening
to the longest strings possible (1701, p. 355), especially at certain times of the day (1701, pp. 300-
301), d'Alembert recommended using the thickest, lowest pitched cords on a stringed instrument, and
many writers indicated their choice of instruments with the most audible harmonics. But for Rameau,
as for Mersenne before him, hearing overtones seemed to be as much a state of mind as it was a
matter of locating the right source in the right context. In one passage, for example, his advice
echoed the instructions of Mersenne, but then added that the listener would be greatly assisted if he
could:
... imagine to himself the fifth or the major third of the dominant sound in order to dispose the ear to
sense these consonances in their unison, or in their octave with which the air resonates... The more one
has an ear experienced in harmony, the more one is capable of distinguishing the different sounds in
question, not only in the resonance of a string, but also in that of all other resonant bodies, even of the
voice : however, as these sounds are found to be extremely weak in comparison to that of the total
body, one can imagine its unisons and octaves to oneself; a means of perception that is natural in regard
to the most commensurable [with the largest aliquote in common] sounds, and which greatly facilitates
the operation, without making one suspect artifice, since to dissuade oneself, one need only imagine for
a moment other intervals than those in question; one imagines them in vain, one can not distinguish
them any more for all that (Gneration, 19-20).

While other writers concentrated on manipulating features of the acoustic environment they believed
would emphasize overtones into audibility, in other words, Rameau even more than Mersenne, worked
on sensitizing listeners minds as well. Though, of course, the concept of sensory threshold was
unknown in the eighteenth century, one might say that the majority of scientists were looking for
ways to boost the target sounds above the perceptual threshold into consciousness, that is while
Rameau described ways to lower the threshold to accommodate sounds he knew were already there.
Like Mersenne, Rameau at times revealed an insight into the mechanics of implicit hearing and of
making the implicit explicit that was almost uncanny. He seemed to recognize the role of auditory
organization in solidifying a percept, and the role of perceptual learning in directing auditory
organization. In particular, he recommended priming the ear: by repeatedly imagining the target
sound, one can dispose the ear to hear it; by attending to one sound over another, one brings it into
relief, increasing its intensity and sharpness. Indeed, Rameaus suggestion to imagine the overtone to
be heard before actually listening is one of the classic exercises of perceptual learning priming the
ear by preparing the mind.

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The clearest example of Mersennes assimilation of timbre to another parameter appears in his
discussion of the unison. Long before Mersenne, the question of the unison is it a consonant interval,
and if so, is it more or less consonant than other intervals had been explored from different points of
view. Since the only recognized distinctive feature of a tone was its pitch, the unison presented a
paradox in combining two tones that were both the same and different. Since the acoustic
imprecisions that help differentiate unison sources are largely below conscious sensory threshold, and
since Mersenne lacked the concept of timbre, there was no way really to describe the difference
between a unison and a single tone. Mersenne struggles with this for some 60 pages, tying himself
earnestly in knots:
the difficulty consists in knowing what difference there is between the unison and the sound: for if one
considers two pulses [beats] of the same sound, and one compares these together, one will find that
they make the unison, and consequently that the parts of a single sound can make the unison. And
because the two parts of the same sound can not make the unison if they are not united together, and
they can not make the sound if they are not disunited, that is to say, if they do not have their durations
in different times, it follows that the unison is, it seems, simpler than the sound, or at least more
conjoint and more united: for though the hearing is not subtle enough to discern the discontinuity or the
succession of beats of the air which makes the sound, nevertheless, they succeed veritably one after the
other, and dont hit the ear at the same time, properly speaking (Consonances, p. 5).

In addition to lacking vocabulary, Mersenne was obviously grappling with a theory of sound
transmission that he hadnt quite mastered. Until the end of the century preceding, sound was
conceived of in terms of Pythagorean ratios, that determined pitch in terms of relative string lengths.
Then a new theory took hold, that claimed sound was disseminated in successive pulses of air, directly
from a source to a listeners ears. Since Mersenne was still using the Pythagorean system in his
Quaestiones in Genesim in 1623, he must not have had much time to assimilate the pulse theory by
the time he began the Harmonie. The excerpt above implies that he understood each pulse to actually
make a sound, so his description of the unison requires taking a single sound, and comparing every
two pulses together to get a unison. That he was less than fluent with the pulse theory becomes more
obvious later when he tells us that a unison can be made from a single sound, if each of its pulses are
strong enough to be divided in two.
For Mersenne, the unison was the perfect interval to demonstrate the real consonance of consonant
intervals, since it lacked the overriding pitch difference that distracts from the consonance itself. In
particular, he he rejects the arguments of philosophers like Aristotle who
deny that [the unison] should be called consonance, because it has no variety of sounds in regard to low
and high: but those who believe that the unison is the queen of consonances are of the contrary opinion,
in that it suffices that the sounds be different in number to make a consonance, and the union of the
sounds being the formal reason of the stated consonances, that which unites them so perfectly that they
are heard as being nearly the same sound, should not be deprived of the name they give the others
(p. 10, my emphasis).

The point of a consonant interval, he explains, is to produce this quality whose excellence depends on
its success in blending the interval tones into a single tone. To make sure his pitch-preoccupied
readers grasp the distinction in parameters he has been making between the pitch of interval tones,
and the quality of their consonance he constructs a long description of two kinds of unisons: in one,
unison voices chant a text on a single pitch, while in the other unison voices singing a melody. He
really hopes we see, he says, that the melodic unison includes a number of kinds [of sound] as great
as is the difference of the high or the low, the monotone unison has no other distinction than that
which comes from different syllables of the text (Consonances, p. 10).
Finally, Mersenne asserts that though the two kinds of singing differ, they are both examples of
consonance made up of simultaneous voices which have no other difference at all than their
particular and individual nature, which is the least difference of those which are between substances
(p. 10). We understand that again he is describing timbre, here as the single contrast inherent in a
unison. The next paragraph begins by designating this difference as the one that distinguishes a
unison relationship from an identity relationship that is from a single tone but also as the quality
that determines the intervals consonance. It turns out, in other words, that the consonant quality for
which he has no name is the same as the timbral quality of the unison interval for which he also has
no name. For the next several Propositions, Mersenne uses mathematical and metaphysical arguments
to show finally that the progression of consonant intervals has its origin in a single sound, but tends
toward unison. As consonance increases that is, as the sound pulses of interval tones coincide more

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and more exactly an interval becomes more and more perfect, until with a unison, consonance
unites [the tones of an interval] so perfectly that they are heard as being nearly the same sound (p.
10). But perfect consonance produces nearly, not exactly the same sound, for exactly the same sound
would convert the intervallic tones into a single tone. Ultimate consonant purity, in other words, is a
function of the blending quality, not the pitches of the tones; ultimate consonant purity occurs when it
reduces the difference between two tones to their respective timbres. For Mersenne, at that point,
consonance is timbre.
Rameau, as well, in the course of his career, confronted the overlap between consonance and timbre.
Beginning with the Nouveau Systme and in each of his major theoretical works thereafter, the
theorist was faced with establishing the same two premises before proceeding to whatever other
points were to be presented: first, he had to prove that the triadic overtones were audible, thus
independent of, or unfused from, the primary tone produced by a corps sonore; and second, he had to
prove that the second and fourth octave harmonics remained imperceptible, or fused into the corps
sonores overall timbre, no matter how audible the other overtones. The first premise was important
to his theory that the corps sonore was the source of harmony, whose triadic principle was
communicated by means of its overtones, and the second was important to his theory of octave
equivalence.2 Of the two premises, Rameau devoted most energy in his early works to establishing the
first. Through 1750, his writings suggest that Rameau considered the phenomenon of unfused
overtones the more suspect of the two premises, requiring persuasive evidence, while the premise of
octave equivalence was simply asserted and justified anecdotally3.
But as the physics of overtones came to be more thoroughly understood and their existence more
popularly acknowledged, and as Rameau was challenged on the validity of octave equivalence by
scientists like Euler and Pierre Estve, he began to spend less energy demonstrating the segregation
of overtones, and more energy demonstrating the fusion of octaves. Many scholars have pointed out
how attuned Rameau was to social and intellectual currents, and how adaptive to these he was in
altering small details, discursive style, and metaphors. The arrival of sensationism by the middle of
the century had introduced the intelligentsia of Paris to the importance of close attention to sensory
phenomena, a doctrine that became became rather a trend in popular and scientific writings. Perhaps,
then, Rameaus transition in emphasis from the segregation of the third and fifth overtones to the
fusion of the second and fourth (octave) harmonics was in part also a reflection of changes in auditory
sensitivity evolving on a broader social scale.
For, in addition to the need to defend octave equivalence, Rameau betrayed a genuine fascination for
the melding phenomenon generally inherent in all overtones. Over time, the ability of the small
sounds to be either heard out or melded into timbre alerted Rameau to the reality of variable
perception and brought him very close to a recognition of fusion and timbre. In the early Gnration
Harmonique, however, one finds Rameau perceiving the phenomenon, but still misinterpreting it. The
fourth experiment instructs the reader as follows:
Take the organ stops called Bourdon, Prestant or Flute, Nazard and Tierce Press one key while only the
Bourdon is sounding, and pull successively each one of the other stops; you will hear their sounds mix
together successively one with the others. You will likewise be able to distinguish one from the others
while they are together; but if, to distract yourself from it, you improvise a moment on the same
keyboard while all the stops resonate together, when you come back to the same key as before, you will
believe that you distinguish no more than a single sound, which will be that of the Bourdon, the lowest
of all, the fundamental, the one that corresponds to the sound of the total [resonating] body
(Gnration, 13).

2
The octave-equivalence rule was essential to Rameaus theory in asserting that a pitch retains its basic identity no
matter what octave it occurs in, or put another way, pitches sharing the same name are equivalent whatever their
octave.
3
For example, he would listeners often confuse octaves for unisons, men and women naturally sing an octave
apart, history has always assigned the same names to notes of different octaves, etc. In the Trait (his first work,
before he knew of the existence of overtones), his presentation of the equivalence rule had been less an assertion
requiring evidence, than an observation about something previously unremarked perhaps, but undeniable once
pointed out.

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 Cornelia FALES

The pipe organ was one of the few instruments of Rameaus time capable of any sort of synthesis4,
and it is signficant that many of his thought experiments for readers required an organ. Here, he uses
the organ to demonstrate variable perception of the same sound, which he cleverly sets up according
to a peculiarity of perceptual organization that he has discovered. He has noticed that separate
components will not fuse into a single tone if they do not share a common onset 5, since the staggered
entrance of each component defines it as a separate tone against the other tones. But if, as Rameau
points out, one is distracted, if ones perceptual logic is diverted to other sounds or activities or if
one simply listens long enough the auditory mind forgets the staggered onsets of the components,
and begins to fuse it into the sound of the total tone.
In the second part of this experiment, Rameau offers a demonstration that though we can hear
overtones when we want to at times when they are inconvenient, they disappear. He instructs us to
play the minor triad E (mi), G (sol), B (si), and to notice the pleasant effect this chord provides us.
But even while were enjoying the effect of the chord, he reminds us that each of the three pitches
that comprise the triad is producing at the same time its own three overtones, for a total of nine
individual tones6:
While these stops are open, press the three keys MI, SOL, SI which form between them a very agreeable
chord called a [minor triad];you will believe that you hear only the three sounds Mi, Sol, Si, you will feel
only the agreeable effect of the chord which they must form among them; however, you know at the
same time that each key is producing three different sounds, not counting the octave, such that if even
one of the other sounds [the harmonics] that we dont distinguish, actually struck the ear, the whole
[group of tones] would form an intolerable cacophony. There is something very strange here
(Generation, 14)

What more proof of harmonic blending do we need, asks Rameau, than to recognize that if any of the
overtones of the original triad pitches were to be individually audible, we would be faced with a
cacophonie insupportable produced by the dissonance of the component tones.
The interesting point in these two demonstrations concerns the sounds that disappear. Where does
Rameau think they go? The terms he uses (se mler, se confondre) to describe the disappearance of
harmonics above the fundamental indicate that he intuitively understands the notion of perceptual
fusion. But his explanation of the results of fusion suggests that this intuition has led him to a
perceptual truth whose implications are impossible to sustain in declarative rhetoric. For when he
describes the sound produced by all four stops in the first demonstration, he says it is a single sound,
that of the Bourdon. This is an error the sound is not that of the Bourdon; the timbre has
changed, according to the harmonic composition of each stop. Surely if Rameau experimented with
adding stops together to see their fusion, he also experimented with subtracting them one by one to
see the difference in sound. And as an organist, he surely knew the timbral function of the stops
each specifying a quality that can be played with any of a range of pitches. Rameau must have known
that, though the pitch remains the same, a combination of the Bourdon and the other blended stops
cannot be the same as the Bourdon alone otherwise, why bother with the other stops at all?
When he finally summarizes the conclusions of his seven experiments, it turns out that the function of
the blended overtones is to render its pitch perceivable:
There remains one consequence to conclude from all these experiments that is more essential than any
other; that is, that a sounds pitch can not be perceived without the assistance of the resonance of a
certain fixed number of its aliquote parts, due to the limits of our senses...

Though Rameau refers to this conclusion repeatedly throughout the Gnration Harmonique, he
manages to maintain a bit of ambiguity on this point. The vocabulary available for description of
musical features was notoriously imprecise through the 18th century. The term for pitch was
variously ton or son, with the former the more precise; alternatively, one could use the verb apprtier
which implied pitch perception. Rameau is relatively consistent in his use of ton when he wants to

4
The organ was particularly appropriate for synthesis because of the mechanical devices that separated the
performer from the resulting sound, effectively eliminating non-uniform micromodulation and other imperfections
that prevent sounds from fusing.
5
One can describe this phenomenon according to several theoretical structures. The most common is auditory scene analysis which
would assign the common onset requirement for fusion to a gestalt principle called variously common fate, old-plus-new, etc.
6
That is, each tone of the minor triad E-G-B has a full complement of overtones, such that the E produces harmonics b and g#, the
G produces harmonics b and d, and the B produces harmonics f# and d#.

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 Cornelia FALES

specify pitch. However, in his discussion of the effect of fused overtones on the pitch of the larger tone
of the corps sonore, he switches almost entirely to the verb apprtier and its derived forms:
... savoir, qu'un Son ne peut tre apprtiable sans le secours de la rsonnance d'un certain nombre fix
de ses parties aliquotes...

In context, this usage is striking, providing sense of ambivalence on Rameaus part, even while he
conveys the point he needs to support his harmonic theory. To a modern reader familiar with the
acuity of Rameaus hearing, it is not difficult to imagine him listening just on the far side of timbre: he
knows there is a qualitative difference to a sound that has captured extra overtones, and pitch
perceptually salient, lexically specific, and conceptually familiar is the most readily available
parameter. After all, the 18th century lacked the means to truly test the thesis: no one had ever
heard a true pure tone in isolation from its harmonics. If it seems incredible that the perceived
parameters of pitch and timbre should be confused in this way, recall de la Hires formulation of the
difference cited earlier.
From his earliest works, Rameau made reference to an auditory instinct that made use of sounds that
eluded the conscious awareness of listeners to shape the creation and reception of music. In his first
work, the Trait de lharmonie, he spoke of sounds that were sous-entendu, and as his career
progressed, he alluded more and more forcefully to the unconscious influence of musical sound. In his
Extrait dune response M. Euler (1753), he reports that though harmonic overtones merge together
indistinguishably, they continue to affect us by an occult sentiment (4; Jacobi, V: 170), of which the
cause remains mysterious:
From this occult sentiment comes to us naturally that of the representation of a sound in its octaves, in a
word, that of their Identity: a sentiment which alone has served as guide to musicians of all times, as
much in theory as in practice (Jacobi, V:170)

And in Observations sur notre instinct pour la musique (1754), he specifically refers to modes of
listening there is a difference between hearing and listening (p. 6), of which only the latter
discovers the mysteries of the corps sonore.
By the time of his Rponse de M. Rameau (1757) to the editors of the Encyclopdie, harmonic fusion
has become almost miraculous:
One could say first that the phenomenon of the corps sonore is the first marvel that Nature has yet
submitted to our reason. To believe, in effect, that one hears only one sound where one distinguishes
three different ones; and to take it still for unique, though one knows it triple, whom could one persuade
of this truth, if one couldnt make him touch it with the finger and eye? (Jacobi, V: 351)

Nature could have left the octave overtones hidden within the acoustic world as she has left many
natural phenomena whose existence we know only by their effects. She could, in fact, have left all the
overtones invisible to us, as they were for a very long time. What could have been her purpose in
disclosing some, but not all of the corps sonores product?
Finally, by the Code de musique pratique and Nouvelles rflexions sur le principe sonore (1760),
Rameau develops a metaphysics for octave equivalence, a device employed by Nature to guide us in
our search for principle.
The trick that Nature uses here, to prevent us from confusing the two proportions which follow [the
octave overtones], can not surprise us too much: she first enchains their terms, 1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5,
then she silences so to speak, those which, according to its first laws, should resonate most loudly that
is, the and - while she pronounces distinctly the sounds of 1/3 and 1/5, which should be less
audible: she hides precisely from the ear that which must be the base of the entire edifice, in order to
present it only what will charm it, the ornament and the life, if these terms are still strong enough to
design the substantial parts, and even constitutive, of the sound, it is this that in the spectacle that she
gives us of the plants and the trees, she offers to our eyes only the trunk, the branches, the twigs, the
leaves, the flowers and the fruits, while she keeps hidden the roots in the entrails of the earth. But the
mystery that she creates for the ear, she reveals to the eye and touch (Nouv. Reflex., Jacobi IV:218)

Unlike any other natural phenomenon that Rameau can think of, the corps sonore changes according
to exigency. It first attracts an ignorant listeners attention by producing for him a single pleasing
sound; next it reveals to the attentive, curious listener the intervals of a twelfth/fifth and seventeenth/
third, on which he develops an elaborate harmonic theory; and finally, it presents an experienced
listener with tactile and/or visual evidence of inaudible octave harmonics. With its pleasing
consonance, the corps sonore has tempted a listener into an understanding of proportion a

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 Cornelia FALES

geometric knowledge acquired through the ear that becomes the foundation of all the arts and
sciences yet to develop.
All of this progress is due to the wisdom of Nature in creating the corps sonore. As represented by a
double geometric progression1, in fact, the octave overtones are each equivalent to what Rameau
considered the primary sound of the tone, and their unity is equivalent to the corps sonores principle.
But why did it take so long for human minds to grasp the principle of the corps sonore? At the
beginning of the Code de musique pratique, he hints at a reason:
All the sciences are not yet discovered; their principle is still unknown: Analysis, though it must
immortalize its authors, can not help us penetrate to that point. This principle is given us in a
phenomenon in which Nature has wanted us very much to take part, in prescribing us all its primitive
laws in the order of Synthesis. What to think? If music eluded the research of the geometer, always
preoccupied with his analysis, and if all its mysteries unfolded easily in the order of Synthesis, doesnt
that demand reflection? (Code, Jacobi IV: 24)

In the Nouvelle rflexions, the Origine des sciences, and several letters, Rameau continues to suggest
the same reason, unfailingly, coyly, but still tentatively. It is in a Preface to the Nouvelle rflexions,
excluded from the printed edition, but transcribed by Jacobi (VI:353-356), that we find his most
concrete expression of his meaning:
finally, the geometer considered the ratios in order to know nature, and me, I looked at nature, and I
saw emerge all the ratios It is only in going back up the river that one is able to touch the source,
when one has discovered the proportions; but doesnt one see them today merged together into a single
object, in unity, in the Corps Sonore, in a word, of which the sound seems unique. If the geometer was
able to make do with the proportions, it is because he did not yet know the principle of them, as it is
easy to believe from the method he persisted in following; but once again, let him listen to the Corps
Sonore, let him consider its products down to the infinitely small, he will see the light emerging at the
first glance, and spreading out on all sides. Here, analysis is a pure loss, all proclaims the order of
synthesis (Jacobi, VI: 353-355)

What Rameau is saying is simple: Prior to his own work, philosophers insisted on understanding
musical sound through the process of analysis, when clearly Nature operates according to principles of
synthesis. Judging by his patterns of evolving thought in earlier works, one can imagine that, had he
lived to publish another treatise after the Origine, he might have pursued his notion of the synthetic
corps sonore to its natural conclusion. His division of the first five harmonics into those representing a
double geometric progression (the octaves) and those representing an arithmetic progression2 (the
third and fifth), or into those that are audible and those that are not, amounts to a separation of the
harmonic series into overtones comprising consonant intervals, and overtones comprising timbre. And
of the two, Rameau finds the fusion of octave equivalent to be more perfect than the audible intervals:
the harmonic progression is distinguished when one pays close attention, while in the geometric
progression all are confused into a single sound, without one being able to distinguish anything at all; in
which the geometric is found already to be far superior to the harmonic progression. (Nouv. Reflex.
Jacobi (IV: 218)

At the end of his life, then, Rameau who was arguably the most instrumental of any 18th century
thinker in promoting the fracture of timbre into perceived overtones, Rameau who barked and
badgered his readers into listening analytically to hear out the small sounds in his last ten years,
having virtually institutionalized the forfeit of timbre for pitch, Rameau showed all the signs of a
change of heart. In the corps sonore as a whole, he found the occulte sentiment of fusion mysterious
in its reversibility now you hear the triad, now you dont and in the unyielding fusion of octave
equivalence he found, finally, an obsession. He knew the danger of analyzing the corps sonore,
because he had done it himself for almost thirty years. If he was inarticulate in his new promotion of
synthesis, it was perhaps because he was still unsure of what his auditory instinct was telling him.
Rameau, who first saw the corps sonore as a machine that generated just the pitches he needed
three and no more in the end, marveled at its unspeakable expansiveness:
Does one not recognize here a living image of the attributes of the Divine? The weakness of our senses
doesnt permit us to understand, to see, and to feel how far the power of the resonating corps sonore
extends over its multiples and segments, in its greatness and immensity, accepting for itself the limits
which are relative to us; can one not draw from it an idea of the Infinite, to the extent that imagination
permits? But this supreme power that it exercises over its aliquants, in forcing them to merge altogether
with it, in embodying them, forming no more than one with them, which signifies precisely the Unison,

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 Cornelia FALES

proves undeniably that it can not be contained, while it contains all without losing anything from its
totality, without dissolving (Lettre aux Philosophes, Jacobi VI: 510)

References
Mersenne, Marin (1636/7). Harmonie Universelle. Paris (facs. ed., 3 volumes).
Rameau, Jean-Philippe (1722-1760). Complete Theoretical Writings. E.R. Jacobi, ed.

1
A geometric progression is one in which the ratio of each term to the term following it is constant; the double
geometric progression defines the octaves of an overtone series (1, 2, 4, 8, etc.).
2
At some points he calls the audible overtones a harmonic progression; aharmonic progression is simply the
inverse of an arithmetic progression that is, the arithmetic progression describes multiples of the fundamental (or
a lowest) frequency, while the harmonic progression describes what he calls sous-multiples which is equivalent to
scenario (string-length) ratios.

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