A Note on Tone: Carl Stumpf’s Tone Psychology and the Violin

This paper tackles philosopher Carl Stumpf’s contributions to founding the discipline of musicology from the vantage point of his musicianship. In an autobiographical essay of 1924, the philosopher and experimental psychologist wrote that he had considered becoming a professional violin player before taking up the study of philosophy. Against this background, the paper examines some of the writing strategies that Stumpf applied in his quest to capture the features of musical sound. It focuses on Stumpf’s on the term "tone" as he used it in the early days of the journal Vierteljahrsschrift für Musikwissenschaft (founded in 1885)—that is, the period between the publication of the two volumes of his magnum opus Tonpsychologie (1883–90).