Marin Mersenne and the Study of Harmony: From Sound to Music [Hardcover]

Marin Mersenne and the Study of Harmony delves into the central role of music among the early modern sciences by focusing on the work of the French polymath Marin Mersenne (15881648). Although now regarded more as an art than a science, music was for many early modern scholars a universal science for studying the harmonies present in all beings. For Mersenne, musics ability to be quantified while being experienced aesthetically meant that it was the central science to approximate the sounding and inaudible harmonies present in the world and universe at large. Bringing together Mersennes interests in the physics of sound and hearing, musical composition, instruments, curiosities, and music from outside Europe, this book shows why so many scholars were drawn to music and how music was at the center of the early modern debate on the foundations of knowledge.Marin Mersenne and the Study of Harmony delves into the central role of music among the early modern sciences by focusing on the work of the French polymath Marin Mersenne (15881648).Leendert van der Miesen is a musicologist and historian, with a focus on the connections between music, science, and sound in the early modern period. He has held fellowships at the Collaborative Research Center 980 in Berlin, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and Bibliotheca Hertziana  Max Planck Institute for Art History.Note on typography and citation, List of figures, List of music examples, Introduction: Harmonies at Work, 1. Music, the Measure of Sound, 2. Instruments between Art and Nature, 3. Collecting Curiosities: Images, Observations, and Earwitnesses, 4. The octave pleases all: Questioning the Universality of Music, 5. Counting and Composing, Conclusion, Appendix A: Composition of Harmonie universelle, Appendix B: Composition of Harmonicorum libri XII, Acknowledgments, Bibliography, IndexUS? L. van der Miesen / Taylor & Francis Group 2025