music, is used to signify the operation of that mechanical power in nature, which every sound has in producing one or more different sounds. Thus any given sound, however simple, produces along with itself, its octave, and two other sounds extremely sharp, viz. its twelfth above, that is to say, the octave of its fifth; and the other the seventeenth above, or, in other words, the double octave of its third major.

Whether we suppose this procreation of sounds to result from an aptitude in the texture and magnitude of certain particles in the air, for conveying to our ears vibrations that bear those proportions one to another, as being determined at once by the partial and total oscillations of any musical string; or from whatever economy of nature we choose to trace it; the power of one sound thus to produce another, when in action, is said to generate. The same word is applied, by Signior Tartini and his followers, to any two sounds which, simultaneously heard, produce a third.