Tune vs Tone: James Sully's and Carl Stumpf's Debate on Music

This chapter contextualizes one of the debates on music in Mind, held remotely between James Sully, regular author on psychology, physiology, and music, and his German counter-part Carl Stumpf. Sully reviews the two volumes of Stumpf’s Tonpsychologie in 1884 and 1891 and uses a review of Stumpf’s reply of 1885 on music psychology in England to return to another discussion about music he held with Edmund Gurney on the pages of Mind. The chapter relates the English discussion on how physiology, psychology, and aesthetics should relate to the German situation, which is characterized by the dominant role that music plays in it. Three aspects are highlighted: the two authors’ shared interest in music against the background of the music culture in each country; their reaction to Hermann von Helmholtz’s work on hearing and music, which both found lacking in psychology; and their work for furthering psychology as a laboratory-based discipline.