IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB556710785

Alexander Ellis’s Translation of Helmholtz’s Sensations of Tone (2018)

Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 109
Issue: 2
Pages: 339-345

URI: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/698239

DOI: 10.1086/698239

Publication Date: 2018
Edition Details: Part of: "Focus: Translating Science over Time"
Language: English

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Music theory Music Physiology Translations Speech Sound 19th century Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von

This essay relocates Alexander J. Ellis’s translation of Hermann von Helmholtz’s book Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik (1863) in a broader context. It discusses Ellis’s various endeavors to make knowledge available to those with limited access to it and, more specifically, his attempts at making the sound of speech accessible to readers of printed text. Against this background, the essay then compares the central notion of tone sensation in Helmholtz’s book to Ellis’s rendition thereof. As will be seen, Ellis preferred familiarity to literal translation, but he also made great efforts to convey the quality of speech sounds where these became the object of investigation. This double strategy—which was not in line with Helmholtz’s forging of a new theory of perception through defamiliarizing common terms—forced Ellis into exuberant explanations that eventually overgrew the carefully transmitted original, resulting in what amounted to a book of his own.

...More

Included in

Article Sven Dupré (2018) Introduction: Science and Practices of Translation. Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 302-307). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB556710785/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Kursell, Julia; (2013)
Experiments on Tone Color in Music and Acoustics: Helmholtz, Schoenberg, and Klangfarbenmelodie (/isis/citation/CBB001320389/)

Article Hui, A. E.; (2011)
Instruments of Music, Instruments of Science: Hermann von Helmholtz's Musical Practices, His Classicism, and His Beethoven Sonata (/isis/citation/CBB001033821/)

Book Dillon, Emma; (2012)
The Sense of Sound: Musical Meanings in France, 1260--1330 (/isis/citation/CBB001201434/)

Thesis Bianchi, Eric; (2011)
Prodigious Sounds: Music and Learning in the World of Athanasius Kircher (/isis/citation/CBB001567278/)

Article Schmidt, Michael J.; (2014)
Visual Music: Jazz, Synaesthesia and the History of the Senses in the Weimar Republic (/isis/citation/CBB001201425/)

Article Berrios, G. E.; (2009)
“On alterations in the form of speech and on the formation of new words and expressions in madness” by L. Snell (1852) (/isis/citation/CBB000932532/)

Article Melle Jan Kromhout; (2020)
The Unmusical Ear: Georg Simon Ohm and the Mathematical Analysis of Sound (/isis/citation/CBB282467130/)

Thesis Brotman, Charles M.; (2005)
The Power of Sound: Evolutionary Naturalism and Music in Anglo-AmericanVictorian Culture (/isis/citation/CBB001560651/)

Article Klotz, Sebastian; (2008)
Tonpsychologie und Musikforschung als Katalysatoren wissenschaftlich-experimenteller Praxis und der Methodenlehre im Kreis von Carl Stumpf (/isis/citation/CBB000930029/)

Article Wood, Kirsten E.; (2014)
“Join with Heart and Soul and Voice”: Music, Harmony, and Politics in the Early American Republic (/isis/citation/CBB001451979/)

Article Rieger, Matthias; (2008)
Unterscheidung und Synthese: Rezeptionsformen akustischer Forschung in der Musikliteratur des 19. Jahrhunderts (/isis/citation/CBB000930028/)

Book Blackmore, John T.; Itagaki, Ryoichi; Tanaka, Setsuko; (2009)
Ernst Mach's Influence Spreads (/isis/citation/CBB001023228/)

Chapter Peters, J.; (2004)
Helmholtz, Edison and sound history (/isis/citation/CBB001180111/)

Article Nicholas J. Wade; (2021)
The vision of Helmholtz (/isis/citation/CBB554132905/)

Article Schmidgen, Henning; (2011)
Passagenwerk 1850. Bild und Zahl in den physiologischen Zeitexperimenten von Hermann von Helmholtz (/isis/citation/CBB001220456/)

Chapter Fowler, David; (2003)
Helmholtz: Combinational Tones and Consonance (/isis/citation/CBB000410007/)

Thesis Pantalony, David Alexander; (2002)
Rudolph Koenig (1832--1901), Hermann von Helmholtz (1821--1894) and the birth of modern acoustics (/isis/citation/CBB001562537/)

Article Pesic, Peter; (2013)
Helmholtz, Riemann, and the Sirens: Sound, Color, and the “Problem of Space” (/isis/citation/CBB001320409/)

Thesis Hui, Alexandra; (2008)
Hearing Sound as Music: Psychophysical Studies of Sound Sensation and the Music Culture of Germany, 1860--1910 (/isis/citation/CBB001561163/)

Thesis Steege, Benjamin Adam; (2007)
Material Ears: Hermann von Helmholtz, Attention, and Modern Aurality (/isis/citation/CBB001560571/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}