Music and Science in the Age of Galileo PDF
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MUSIC AND SCIENCE IN THE AGE OF GALILEO THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTA RIO SERIES IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE ASERIES OF BOOKS IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, METHODOLOGY, EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, HISTORY OF SCIENCE, AND RELATED FJELDS Managing Editor ROBERT E. BUTTS Dept. 0/ Philosophy, University o/Western Ontario, Canada Editorial Board JEFFREY BUB, University 0/ Maryland L. JONATHAN COHEN, Queen' s College, Oxford WILLIAM DEMOPOULOS, University o/Western Ontario WILLIAM HARPER, University o/Western Ontario JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University CLIFFORDA. HOOKER, University o/Newcastle HENRY E. KYBURG, JR., University 0/ Rochester AUSONIO MARRAS, University o/Western Ontario JÜRGEN MITTELSTRASS, Universität Konstanz JOHN M. NICHOLAS, University o/Western Ontario GLENN A. PEARCE, University o/Western Ontario BAS C. VAN FRAASSEN, Princeton University VOLUME51 MUSIC AND SCIENCE IN THE AGE OF GALILEO Edited by VICTOR COELHO Department 01 Music, The University olCalgary, Alberta, Canada SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA. B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Music and sc1ence 1n the age of Gal11eo / ed1ted by V1ctor Coelho. p. cm. -- (UniVers1ty of Western Ontario ser1es 1n ph11osophy of science; v. 51) Includes b1b11ograph1cal references and 1ndex. ISBN 978-90-481-4218-7 ISBN 978-94-015-8004-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-8004-5 1. Mus1c and sC1ence--Congresses. 2. Music--Phl1osophy and aesthetics--Congresses. 3. Galilei, Galtleo, 1564-1642--Congresses. I. Coelho, Vlctor. II. Series. ML3800.M87 1992 780' .9'032--dc20 92-33288 Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 1992 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1992 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1992 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without wrilten permission from the copyright owner. For Brita CONTENTS Preface ix PART I Historical, Contemporary, and Celestial Models for the Musical and Scientific Revolution in the Age of Galileo Music and Philosophy in Early Modem Seienee Stillman Drake 3 Beats and the Origins of Early Modem Seienee H. Floris Cohen 17 Musie and the Crisis of Seventeenth-Century Europe Alexander Silbiger 35 Kepler, Galilei, and the Harrnony of the World Owen Gingerich 45 PART 11 Symbolical and Philosophical Perspectives on Galileo and Music The Artistie Patronage of the Barberini and the Galileo Affair Frederick Hammond 67 Musical Myth and Galilean Seienee in Giovanni Serodine's Allegoria della scienza Victor Coelho 91 Tiekles, Titillations, and the WondeIful Aeeidents of Sounds: Galileo and the Consonanees Robert E. Butts 115 Galileo and the Demise of Pythagoreanism William Jordan 129 viii MUSIC AND SCIENCE IN TIIE AGE OF GALILEO PARTIII The Musical Background of Seventeenth-Century Science: Theory, Practice, and Craftsmanship Was Galileo's Father an Experimental Scientist? Claude V. Palisca 143 Vincenzo Galilei in Rome: His First Book of Lute Music (1563) and its Cultural Context Howard Mayer Brown 153 Six Seventeenth-Century Dutch Scientists and their Knowledge of Music Rudolf A. Rasch 185 In Tune with the Universe: The Physics and Metaphysics of Galileo's Lute Robert Lundberg 211 Contributors 241 Index 243 PREFACE Chiamavi 'I cielo e 'ntomo vi si gira, mostrandovi le sue bellezze etterne, e l' occhio vostro pur a terra mim; Dante, PurgaJorio (Canto XIV, 148-50) ONE OF THE MOST PROMISING TRENDS of recent years has been the seri ous attention paid to the relationship between music and science during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At that time, of course, these two branches of study grew from the same trunk of leaming, and investigations into musical science confronted not only speculative questions about the composition of the heavens and their affinities with the soul, but practical issues such as tuning and temperament, musical composition, and instru ment building. Since musical sound is a quality of both measurable and qualitative dimensions, speculations about the nature and beauty of sound brewed in unusually diverse sectors of intellectual thought of early modem Europe, from alchemy and neo-Platonism, to astronomy and empirical science. As Paolo Gozza has written recently, the relationship between science and music represents a classic paradox: music, "the most spon taneous expression of the active psyche, admits and even requires, at the same time, the most rigorous mathematical analysis."1 To probe the relationship between music and science is also, however, to nurture the often-unpredictable collaboration between the fields of science and music. It was with that goal in mind that the present volume of essays was conceived. The bulk of the articles that appear in this collection were presented in April, 1989, at an international conference entitled "Music and Science in the Age of Galileo," organized by the departments of Music and of Mechanical Engineering at the U niversity of Calgary in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.2 This symposium brought together, perhaps for the first time in recent history, many of the world's specialists in music and science from the areas of astronomy, his tory of science, musicology, composition, 1 Paolo Gozza, ed., La musica nella rivoluzione scientifica dei seicento (Bologna, 1989), edi tor's introduction, p. 9. 2 Four papers from the original conference do not appear in this volume. These are: Paolo Gozza, "Pietro Mengoli's Speculative Music (1670): A 'Mental Ear' in the Galilean School"; Maria Rika Maniates, "The Brickbats of Ercole Bottrigari"; Clifford Truesdell, "Musical Acoustics from the Beginnings through the Achievements of Galileo"; Anthony Rooley, "11 Cantar Novo: Experimental Music in ltaly, 1560-1630." The article by Victor Coelho was not presented at the conference and is an addition to this volume. ix x MUSIC AND SCIENCE IN THE AGE OF GALllEO instrument building, and philosophy. In short, the essential components of Galileo's intellectual character were represented. The tide Music and Science (rather than Musical Science) was chosen to accommodate perspectives on the topic and period that had not yet been considered, as weH as to entertain autonomous work and methods that may not have foHowed in the tracks of previous work in the field. This last consideration is an important one to keep in mind, given the different methodologies used by historians of science and historians of music. Musicologists have for the most part constructed their histories of this period through source studies. The primary documents are musical compositions, which require analysis within the stylistic parameters established by the theoretical writings of the period. The musical culture and historical context surrounding the composition can then be fleshed out through documentary evidence, archival material and printed documents, as weH as by tracing manuscript transmission, concordances, and printing histories. In tracing a musical style, in other words, emphasis is placed on what the culture says about itself, derived as much as possible from primary source material. In addition, musicologists have generaHy heeded KristeHer's words to historians that the "claim that only certain aspects of our civilization and its history are basic and worthy of investigation is wrong and must be rejected." Musicologists have given extensive treatment to anonymous works, so-called "minor" composers, and local traditions. It is necessary to point out, however, that such studies must proceed without much information provided by the composers themselves. Composers said virtually nothing about how they wrote, what their compositional process entailed, and what the subtexts are, if any, of their music. Compounding the matter is thedifficulty of dating, and it is not unusual for musicologists to devote an entire lifetime towards establishing a reliable chronology of a composer's works-a task that must be considered a necessary precondition for any serious work on matters of style and evolution. Consequently, it has been difficult to find a consensus among musicologists as to exacdy where stylistic revolutions occured, what composers themselves perceived about these changes, and where their exact roots are to be found. In recent years, due almost singlehandedly to Claude Palisca's work on Vincenzo Galilei,3 the field of music history has taken major steps forward towards understanding how the Scientific Revolution can also be traced within the context of music history. 3 See for example, Palisca's "Three Scientific Essays by Vincenzo Galilei," in The Florentine Camerata: Documentary Studies and Translations (New Havcn & London, 1989), pp. 152-207. PREFACE xi The idea of a Scientific Revolution in the history of science is, on the other hand, fairly weH established. The tradition derived from Butterfieid and, more recently, Kuhn and Westfali, has given the field adefinite shape, as well as a momentum.4 Based on the voluminous preserved writings of ancient and modern natural philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, and a1chemists, the theory of the scientific revolution has received numerous formulations, reformulations, and reappraisals in the history of science. Such formulations were bound to leave "lesser figures" unstudied, how ever, and archival work, particularly as it could relate to the important field of scientific patronage, was conspicuously absent. On the other hand, historians of science clearly acknowledged the contribution of the unwritten craft tradition, and many historians of science have dug up the roots of the scientific revolution in the craftsman' s field. (The contribution of instrument makers--certainly, the "craftsmen" of music-is a history that cries out to be recognized in musicology.) Although the real growth in the area of musical science has been quite recent, some fertile seeds were planted years ago by the late D. P. Walker, the mechanicist Clifford Truesdell, as well as by members of the slightly older generation of musical scientists.5 Both Stillman Drake and Alistair Crombie found important connections between Galileo's methods and music, and they argued in several essays for a deeper exploration of these relationships.6 (Crombie's articles on Mersenne as an experimentalist and on music and medical science are also important studies, though they are relatively unknown to musicologists.)7 But it has only been in the last decade or so that research in musical science has occupied a distinct area in the field of history of science; nevertheless, the work produced so far by Cohen, Gouk, Gozza, and Kassler is of an impressively high standard. 8 4 Many of the views presented here are indebted to the introduction by Robert S. Westman and David C. Lindberg in Reappraisals o[ the Scientific Revolution, ed. R. S. Westman & D. C. Lindberg (Cambridge, 1990), pp. xvii-xxvii. 5 D. P. Walker's articles are contained in Studies in Musical Science in the Late Renaissance (London & Leiden, 1978). The main work on vibration theory by Truesdell is in The Rational Mechanics o[ Flexible or Elastic Bodies, 1638-1788, in Leonhardi Euleri Opera Omnia, vol. 11 (Zurich, 1960). 6 See Stilhnan Drake, "Renaissance Music and Experimental Science," Journal o[the History o[ 1deas 31 (1970), pp. 483-500 and "The Role of Music in Galileo's Experiments," Scienti[ic American 232 (January-June, 1975), pp. 98-104. 7 Crombie's articles on music have been anthologized in his Science, Optics and Music in Me dieval and Early Modern Thought (London, 1990). 8 See, for example, H. F. Cohen, Quantifying Music: The Science o[ Music at the First Stage o[ the Scientific Revolution (Dordrecht, 1984); Paolo Gozza, "La musica nella filosofia naturale dei seicento in Italia," Nuncius 1 (1986), pp. 13-47; Penelope Gouk, "Music in the Natural Philosophy of the Early Royal Society (Ph. D diss., London, The Warburg Institute, 1982);
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