Evolution And Verification For Harmony And Consonance

This dissertation is a theoretical research and practical verification for the fundamental of harmonics, the harmony and consonance. Research includes three aspects, Physics, physiology and psychology.Theoretical works present in first to fourth chapters. In first two chapters, author starts from the Pythagorean number theory in the course of harmonics theory, as referring to the view of cosmography, to exposit the natural and physical foundation for perception of harmony and consonance. The third chapter takes Helmholtz as representative to introduce scientists'practical study results for perception of harmony and consonance. The research mode of musical acoustics established by Helmholtz, confirming each other from physical, physiological to psychological, which has been a classical research mode and a excellent technical course. The fourth chapter sums up research results of physiological acoustics and psychoacoustics from 20th century, which be integrated onto the background of harmony and consonance's exploration and thereby reveals that, the chords structures is established on the basis of "aural harmonics" and "virtual pitch", the former being the foundation for superimposition of upper pitch and the later being the derived principle for root of chord.Practical works are included in fifth to seventh chapters. Harmonious latitude, beats phenomenon, aural harmonics and virtual pitch are the most important parts and introduce experimental method of music psychology to test them. Among those, the authentication method is introduced to attest aural harmonics and virtual pitch and beside that, harmonious latitude and second order beats are explored further. In the seventh chapter, author attests the consonance of complex tone and speculates this theoretically. There is another probe into the natural foundation of minor triad too. Treating of colorific perception, author borrowed "frequency code" from speech prosody and bioacoustics to discriminate the color between major and minor triad. According that, in the final discussion, to presume the origin of Dong ethnic great songs, for example, author want to study the perception of harmony and consonance on broader background, as to disclose biology and sociology significances that imply in perception of harmony and consonance.The conclusion is that, perception of harmony and consonance are universal and consistent, i.e. they are established on natural and physical principles and have evidences of biology and psychology, which is the undermost base for system of major and minor harmony. So, the dissertation brings forward a further hypothesis, that a preset structure of harmonic series exists in human auditory system, which matches the sounds to arouse the perception of harmony and consonance.