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Music 251B
March 19, 2003
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
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
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
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:
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
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
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.
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 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
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.
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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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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
However, its existence is not dependent upon the perception of tonal fusion, but on the
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
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
Verschmelzung. In his later works, notably Die Sprachlaute (1926), Stumpf expressed
uncertainty about Verschmelzung as the cause of consonance and dissonance; instead, he saw
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
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)
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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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,
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Bregman suggested that there are two independent characteristics of auditory perception
dissonance, and fusion. In a twist on Stumpf’s original proposal that fusion causes (musical)
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
instruments, or differing the onset time and duration of the two tones.
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
26
Albert S. Bregman, Auditory Scene Analysis (1990), 507.
27
Ibid., 509-510.
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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
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
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
sounding “like one melody” or “like one sound.” Compare this to Stumpf’s description 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
32
Stumpf, “Konsonanz und Dissonanz,” as quoted in Tenney, ‘Consonance’ and ‘Dissonance’, 30.
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