JF Ptak Science Books    Quick Post

It isn’t quite that–wait a minute: yes, it is. But it wasn’t a “million”, but “millions”. The reference is to a thought experiment in which “millions of violinists performing every conceivable sound within the octave, with a view to the production of the purest and most ethereal of sounds”.  

It seems like a musical experiment best left to stay inside the head, though I would of course love to hear a million of anything do anything at all.  

The experiment occurs as a sidelight to a very interesting and very early article by Sedley Taylor, “Analogy of Colour and Music”,  found in Nature, volume 2, February 24, 1870, in the letters to the editor section, p. 430. His work on analogy in music and color is very early, particularly by someone who was conversant in both worlds. (Taylor would translate von Helmholt’s great work on the sensation of tone into English (On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, publishing it in 1875.)  Also in 1875 Taylor published his work on the color/sound subject in a book, Sound and Music. According to Cyril Rootham (1920):

“Sound and Music,” was… the earliest general exposition in short compass by a writer competent on both sides of the subject. An event which his characteristic energy rendered prominent was his invention of an apparatus which he named the phoneidoscope. It consisted essentially of a resonant cavity, with an aperture over which a soap-film was stretched: when the operator sang to it a note nearly in unison with the cavity, the aerial vibrations revealed themselves visibly in whirling movement of the coloured striations of the liquid film.”–quote via Wiki article on Taylor

The entire article is included, below: