The Influence of Intensity on the Pitch of Violin and 'Cello Tones
Milton Cowan, Don Lewis · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1936
Three independent investigators (Zurmühl, Stevens and Fletcher) have recently shown that significant changes in the pitch of certain pure tones accompany changes in their intensity, the amount of change depending upon both frequency and intensity. The question naturally arises as to whether the pitch of complex musical tones is similarly related to intensity. The present paper is the report of an investigation which was undertaken to answer this question insofar as it relates to violin and 'cello tones. The results are not entirely unequivocal, but they tend to show that intensity has no measurable effect on the pitch of the tones studied. Intensity may affect the pitch of these tones but, if it does, the pitch-intensity relationship here is basically different from that operative in the case of pure tones; and this is unlikely.