Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Artificial compound

by John Weeks Moore

Artificial compound. The artificial compound, which alone comes under the musician's province, is that mixture of several different sounds, which being produced by art, the ingredient sounds are separable, and distinguish-able from one another. In this sense the distinct sounds of several voices or instruments, or several notes of the same instrument, are called simple sounds, in contradistinction to the compound ones, in which, to answer the purposes of music, the simple ones must have such an agreement in all relations, chiefly as to acuteness and gravity, as that the ear may receive the mixture with pleasure.