Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson

41 The Bokharian Dervish Hadji-Asvatz-Troov

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“‘I must first tell you that before this I already very well knew that half the length of any string gives twice the number of vibrations of a whole string of equal volume and density, and in accordance with this principle I arranged on the zimbal what are called “bridges” for the strings and then began correspondingly to tune all the strings for a certain ancient sacred melody in “one-eighth-toned” sounds, of course according to my “Perambarrsasidaan” or, as it is called in Europe, “tuning fork,” producing the vibrations of the Chinese absolute note do.

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“‘It was during this tuning that I first clearly constated that the principle, namely, that the number of the vibrations of a string is inversely proportional to its length, does not always but only sometimes coincide with the obtaining of what is called a “common blending harmonic consonance.”