"Nature Has Completely Denied Me a Musical Ear" Are Musical Notes Sine Waves, and Why (Not)?

What does a musical note physically represent? Notwithstanding the fact that Western music notation predates the required scientific framework by at least 800 years, based on their clearly defined pitch and frequency, it can be argued that written notes are symbolic representations of sine waves. This paper explores this proposition by looking at the nineteenth century scientific development of the concept of the sine wave, focusing on Georg Ohm's groundbreaking article On the Definition of Tone from 1843, in which he first applied the mathematical principles of Fourier Analysis to the study of sound. The scientific trajectory leading up to Ohm's breakthrough is marked by a gradual disappearance of musical notation. While pitches are reinterpreted as frequencies, music itself became less and less important, up to the point where, in A Few More Words on the Definition of Tone (1844), Ohm even explicitly admits that "nature has completely denied me a musical ear" (7). Given the almost complete absence of musical notation in his three articles on acoustics and his personal notes contained in the archives of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, I argue that Ohm's self-confessed 'unmusicality' is a key factor of his new theory of physical sound. As a decisive point in the trajectory from a culture of symbolic transcription to a culture of technological inscription, mathematical Fourier analysis processes the physicality of sound beyond the grid of traditional intervals and harmonies. Ohm's work in acoustics can therefore be interpreted as the introduction of what media theoretician Bernhard Siegert calls a 'cultural technique,' defining the distinction between the domain of music and the field of acoustics, between what is called music and what is called sound, between musical harmonies and physical frequency spectra and, lastly, between musical notes and mathematical sine waves.