Article ID: CBB000930029

Tonpsychologie und Musikforschung als Katalysatoren wissenschaftlich-experimenteller Praxis und der Methodenlehre im Kreis von Carl Stumpf (2008)

unapi

Klotz, Sebastian (Author)


Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte
Volume: 31
Pages: 195--210


Publication Date: 2008
Edition Details: Part of a special issue: Science and Music
Language: German

Tone psychology and music research as catalysts of experimental-scientific practice and methodology in the circle of Carl Stumpf. The study of acoustics, harmonics and of music has been providing scientific models since Greek Antiquity. Since the early modern ages, two separate cultures began to emerge out of the study of music: a technical acoustics and an aesthetically and philosophically inspired musical criticism. In the writings of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1811) a scientific approach to musical aesthetics and to music perception is taking shape that reinstalls the listening process as a highly complex and logical phenomenon. By opening music for a scientific psychological investigation, Herbart pioneered the physiologically and acoustically grounded seminal work by Hermann von Helmholtz On the sensations of tone (1863) which the author considered a prerequisite for musical aesthetics and music theory. Helmholtz in turn inspired the philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf to further investigate musical perception (beginning in 1883). To Stumpf, it provided a paradigm for experimental psychology as mental functions and phenomena could be studied in detail. These functions and phenomena are the actual objects of scientific study in Stumpf's inductive and descriptive psychology. Combining insights from statistics, ethnology, anthropology, psychoacoustics and the cultural history of mankind, Stumpf and his team developed a new blend of science which absorbs styles of reasoning, analytical procedures and academic convictions from natural history, the natural sciences and the humanities but at the same time identifies shortcomings of these approaches that fail to grasp the complexities of psychic functions. Despite their reliance on the quasi-objective phonograph and despite their commitment to objectivity, precision and measurement, mental phenomena relating to tonal perception and to music provided too complex a challenge to be easily articulated and shared by the scientific community after 1900. The essay illustrates these tensions against the background of a history of objectivity.

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Description On Stumpf's combining of statistics, ethnology, anthropology, psychoacoustics.


Included in

Article Ash, Mitchell G. (2008) Wissenschaft und Musik -- Einführende Bemerkungen. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte (p. 87). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB000930029/

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Authors & Contributors
Kursell, Julia
Beltrami, Cesare
Chowning, John M.
Wright, M. C. M.
Wood, Kirsten E.
Wilson, Preston S.
Concepts
Music
Music theory
Science and music
Acoustics
Harmony (music theory)
Musical instruments
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
Renaissance
20th century
Early modern
Ancient
Places
Germany
United States
Italy
Greece
France
Europe
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