Carl Stumpf (1848-1936)

came from family of physicians; both parents were musical

first academic interest was in music; learned to play six instruments; taught himself harmony and counterpoint

at the age of 23 (1865) he studied philosophy and theology with Franz Brentano at Würzburg University; then studied philosophy and natural sciences at Göttingen University; graduated with PhD in philosophy in 1870 (age 28)

was professor of philosophy at Würzburg (1873), Prague (1879), Halle (1884), Munich (1889) and Berlin (1893-1928)

when taking up his position at Berlin (at the age of 45) he transformed a small psychological laboratory founded by Hermann Ebbinghaus into the Psychologisches Institut.

This institute became the principle rival to the psychological laboratory founded by Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig

In 1905 the archives of the Psychologisches Institut became the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv

Became personally acquainted with Helmholtz only in the final year of Helmholtz's life (1894).

Famous students of Stumpf:

Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) [founder of Phenomology]

Max Wertheimer (1880-1943); Wolfgang Köhler (1887-1967); Kurt Koffka (1886-1941) [the three founders of Gestalt psychology]

Erich Hornbostel (1877-1935); [Director of the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv]

Otto Abraham (1872-1926) [in 1901 Abraham and Stumpf recorded a visiting Siamese orchestra on wax cylinders]

[with Hornbostel, applied Stumpf's Comparative musicology to study of non-European music; Hornbostel & Abraham published on Japanese, Turkish, Indian & Amerindian music)

Curt Sachs (1881-1959) [with Hornbostel published influential system of instrument classification (1914) ("Systematik der Musikinstrumente"); being Jewish, emigrated to US when Hitler came to power. Became highly influential musicologist in the US.]

Coined term Tonpsychologie.

Two-volume book entitled Tonpsychologie. (1883, 1890).

Green and Butler (2002) characterize Tone Pscyhology as follows:

"Tone psychology may be viewed as a philosophically oriented phase of music psychology whose scope was limited to psychoacoustics and the experiential aspects of elementary tonal organization." (p.263)

Devised "Comparative Musicology." (vergleichende Musikwissenschaft)

In order to test the universality of his theories, Stumpf looked to non-Western music. In this he was much influenced by the writings of Alexander Ellis. Stumpf's "Lieder der Bellakula Indianer" (1886) is considered th origins of ethnomusicology. This article was the first to describe the repertory of a single group of people, including transcriptions into Western notation with an accompanying analysis, and finally a discussion of the cultural context of the music.

Stumpf argued for the founding of a sound archive for non-Western music.

Famous for the idea that consonance arises from tonal fusion (Tonverschmelzung) where tones blend into a unitary percept.

"The tonal fusion of dyads, he asserted, is entirely a function of the ratios of the fundamental frequencies of the tones -- even if slightly mistuned -- and is independent of timbre, loudness, or register." (Green & Butler, p. 264)

Advantage of tonal fusion: it appears to explain why tones presented to separate ears might still be judged dissonant. (Green & Butler, p.264)

Hugh Riemann (1849-1919) "criticized the theory of tonal fusion as too limited because it failed to describe, let alone explain, consonance and dissonance of combinations of three or more tones." (Green & Butler, p.265)

Like Helmholtz, Stumpf recognized that "chordal effects are very context-dependent." (Green & Butler, p.265)