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.