Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Musurgia Universalis

"It must be the case for all celebrated polymaths, in every century,
that they themselves know, as surely as they know anything,
that they, like us, do not know everything." [Stephen Jay Gould]


Musurgia Universalis frontispiece



schematics of organ



ossicles - comparative anatomy



mnemonic device - Guidonian hand



larynx/thorax - comparative anatomy



birdsong as musical scores



musical abacus



stringed instruments



more stringed instruments



wind instruments



Euterpe with Cerberus at her feet



arca musarythmica



bouncing sounds off walls



piping sound in a house



piping sound to a statue



hydropneumatic musical box component schematics



chime component - Musurgia Universalis



hydropneumatic organ



automatic hydraulic organ



clock bell chime via pulleys



hydraulic automata



automatic hydraulic organ



Genesis creation via organ harmonics



Typus Sympathicus Microcosmi cum Migacosmo



two male bodies in segmented proportions



Circulus Universorum

[click on images for much enlarged versions]



Athanasius Kircher SJ - 'Musurgia Universalis', 1650.
Online at the University of Strasbourg: Volume One, Volume Two. [links updated Dec. 2013]
"Kircher's best-remembered work is also his second largest. Musurgia Universalis is an exhaustive compendium of musical knowledge at the transition point between sacred renaissance polyphony and secular Baroque music. Much of Musurgia is dedicated to a survey of contemporary music, including the first published mention of the baroque 'doctrine of the affections' in which music is ideally analogous to human emotions. Many surviving compositions by Frescobaldi, Froberger and other baroque masters are due to Kircher's extensive transcriptions and reproductions of scores in Musurgia. Kircher speculates on the music of early cultures and reproduces a melody he claimed to have seen on a manuscript in Sicily dating back to ancient Greece, making it (if authentic) the oldest surviving example of musical notation. A large part of the book is devoted to the history of instrumentation, including the anatomy of voice and hearing, and an extensive theory on acoustics entitled 'Magia Phonocamptica, sive de Echo', in which he described sound as 'the ape of light'.

Kircher professes the Boethian concept of musical harmonies' mathematical correspondences within the body, the heavens, and the natural world, and concludes with a discussion of the unheard music of the nine angelic choirs and the Holy Trinity. Kircher's research in music and acoustics led to many innovations and inventions, particularly in the area of amplification and sound design, which he would expand upon in his Phonurgia nova (Kempten 1673). Other devices created the illusion of talking statuary, hydraulically powered mechanical music-playing automata, the aeolian harp (which was revived and venerated by the English romantic poets as a model of divine inspiration), the hearing aid, and the arca musarithmica: a primitive mechanical computer that would compose simple random compositions, as well as write messages in cipher, calculate the date of Easter in any year, and design fortifications." [source]

7 comments :

Karla said...

A fine Guidonian hand there, not to mention those excellent lutes and viols. I must confess, however, that some of the images have me sorely baffled as to how Kircher connected them to music. Anatomy meets polyphony, perhaps?

The Lone Beader® said...

I used to play the viola, so I love these illustrations=:)

Karla said...

Perhaps we sometime viola players are naturally drawn to these things.

Unknown said...

Precious. Thankyou for unearthing.

Paulo Brabo said...

Tremendous.

Mike said...

i like the ilusttrations on echos

Dan Shaddick said...

fantastic - thank you!

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