RAYLEIGH,LORD CONTRIBUTIONS TO MUSICAL ACOUSTICS

Rayleigh's work touched virtually every area of acoustics in some way; musical acoustics is certainly no exception. Besides laying the groun dwork for all subsequent research on musical instruments with his info rmative discussions of the vibrations of strings, bars, membranes, pla tes, air columns, and resonators, he did important theoretical and exp erimental work on bells and kettledrums. He identified the vibrational modes that radiated the most prominent partials in the sounds of both of these instruments, and he recognized that the nominal pitch of a c hurch bell lies one octave below the fifth partial. He compared organ pipes with and without flanges, and he determined the effect of blowin g pressure on pitch. In the reflected sound from a grove of trees, he observed an acoustic analogue of Rayleigh scattering of light. In the area of music perception, his most important contributions were his st udies of absolute pitch and sound source localization. (C) 1995 Acoust ical Society of America.