Guest JC -

But compared to Helmholtz, Kircher was just "philosophizing about music," whereas Helmholtz took it apart and put the pieces back together again.

Kircher is quite important, and much neglected, for the historical significance of his works in a number of fields; while Helmholtz isn't really history yet. Helmholtz is mostly good physics, today, by modern standards, and is a useful sourcebook for people who want to understand musical sound production as it's done now with modern instruments.

The Helmholtz book isn't that large, only about 580 pages in the Dover English translation (if you read all the footnotes). It's just more than I'd suggest someone should try to digest while struggling with an unfamiliar language - at least prior to understanding what it's about in their own language.

John