Seashore, Carl Emil

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Seashore, Carl Emil

Seashore, Carl Emil, Swedish-American psychologist; b. Morlunda, Jan. 28, 1866; d. Lewiston, Idaho, Oct. 16, 1949. He was taken to the U.S. as a child. He studied at Gustavus Adolphus Coll. in Minn. (B.A., 1891), and pursued the study of psychology at Yale Univ. (Ph.D., 1895), where he was an assistant in its psychological laboratory (1895–97). He joined the faculty of the Univ. of Iowa in 1902, where he was head of its psychology dept. and its psychological laboratory (from 1905). He devised a widely used method for measuring musical talent (“Seashore Test”) through special measurements of his own invention (audiometer, tonoscope, chronograph, etc.).

Writings

Measures of Musical Talent (NX, 1919; second ed., rev., 1939 with D. Lewis and J. Saetveit as Seashore Measuresof Musical Talents; third ed., rev., 1960); ed. Psychology of the Vibrato in Voice and Instrument (Iowa City, 1936); Psychology of Music (N.Y., 1938); In Search of Beauty in Music: A Scientific Approach to Musical Aesthetics (N.Y., 1947).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire