HARMONIC SOUNDS OR OVERTONES § 9. _Timbre; Klangfarbe; Clang-tint_ We now approach a portion of our subject which will subsequently prove to be of the very highest importance. It has been shown by the most varied experiments that a stretched string can either vibrate as a whole, or divide itself into a number of equal parts, each of which vibrates as an independent string. Now it is not possible to sound the string as a whole without at the same time causing, to a greater or less extent, its subdivision; that is to say, superposed upon the vibrations of the whole string we have always, in a greater or less degree, the vibrations of its aliquot parts. The higher notes produced by these latter vibrations are called the _harmonics_ of the string. And so it is with other sounding bodies; we have in all cases a coexistence of vibrations. Higher tones mingle with the fundamental one, and it is their intermixture which determines what, for want of a better term, we call the _quality_ of the sound. The French call it _timbre_, and the Germans call it _Klangfarbe_.[38] It is this union of high and low tones that enables us to distinguish one musical instrument from another. A clarinet and a violin, for example, though tuned to the same fundamental note, are not confounded; the auxiliary tones of the one are different from those of the other, and these latter tones, uniting themselves to the fundamental tones of the two instruments, destroy the identity of the sounds. All bodies and instruments, then, employed for producing musical sounds emit, besides their fundamental tones, others due to higher orders of vibration. The Germans embrace all such sounds under the general term _Obertöne_. I think it will be an advantage if we in England adopt the term _overtones_ as the equivalent of the term employed in Germany. One has occasion to envy the power of the German language to adapt itself to requirements of this nature. The term _Klangfarbe_, for example, employed by Helmholtz is exceedingly expressive, and we need its equivalent also. Color depends upon rapidity of vibration, blue light bearing to red the same relation that a high tone does to a low one. A simple color has but one rate of vibration, and it may be regarded as the analogue of a simple tone in music. A _tone_, then, may be defined as the product of a vibration which cannot be decomposed into more simple ones. A compound color, on the contrary, is produced by the admixture of two or more simple ones, and an assemblage of tones, such as we obtain when the fundamental tone and the harmonics of a string sound together, is called by the Germans a _Klang_. May we not employ the English word _clang_ to denote the same thing, and thus give the term a precise scientific meaning akin to its popular one? And may we not, like Helmholtz, add the word _color_ or _tint_, to denote the character of the clang, using the term _clang-tint_ as the equivalent of Klangfarbe?